Securely storing, rotating, and controlling access to credentials like API keys and passwords instead of hardcoding them in your codebase.

What is secrets management?

Secrets management is the set of tools, practices, and policies that govern how your organization handles sensitive credentials. A "secret" in this context is any piece of information that grants access to a system or resource: API keys, database passwords, SSH keys, encryption keys, OAuth tokens, service account credentials, TLS certificates, and similar sensitive data.

The core problem secrets management solves: credentials need to be available to the applications and services that use them, but they should never be visible to anyone or anything else. Without a deliberate secrets management practice, credentials end up hardcoded in source code, committed to version control, pasted into Slack messages, stored in plaintext configuration files, or embedded in Docker images. Each of these locations is a breach waiting to happen.

A proper secrets management system:

  • Centralizes credential storage in an encrypted vault (like HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, or Doppler)
  • Controls access through fine-grained policies that define which services and users can read which secrets
  • Enables rotation so credentials can be changed regularly without manual updates across your infrastructure
  • Maintains an audit trail of who accessed which secret and when
  • Injects secrets at runtime so they never need to exist in code, configuration files, or container images

Why secrets management matters for startups

The scale of credential leakage is staggering. GitHub reported finding 39 million secret leaks across its platform in 2024 alone.

Here's why startups are especially vulnerable:

  1. Speed encourages shortcuts. When you're building fast, hardcoding an API key to test an integration feels harmless. But that key gets committed to git, shared to every developer who clones the repo, and persists in your git history even if you delete the file later. According to GitGuardian, repositories using GitHub Copilot showed a 40% higher incidence of secret leakage compared to average, suggesting AI coding assistants can accelerate the problem.
  2. Secrets sprawl beyond code. Credentials don't just live in source code. GitGuardian found that 6.1% of Jira tickets and 2.4% of Slack channels contained leaked secrets. Configuration management tools, CI/CD pipelines, Docker images, and internal wikis are all common hiding places. The more tools your team uses, the more surfaces where secrets can leak.
  3. One leaked key can bypass everything. The 2024 U.S. Treasury Department breach was traced to a single leaked API key for BeyondTrust's authentication platform. Attackers bypassed millions of dollars in security infrastructure by exploiting one exposed credential. For startups with fewer layers of defense, the impact is even more direct.
  4. Compliance requires credential management. SOC 2 and ISO 27001 both require controls around credential management, access logging, and secret rotation. Auditors will ask how you store and distribute credentials, and "they're in our .env files" is not the answer they're looking for.

How Fencer helps with secrets management

Fencer's secrets scanning detects hardcoded secrets in your codebase, including API keys, passwords, tokens, and private keys committed to your repositories. Rather than just flagging the file and line number, Fencer contextualizes the finding within your code-to-cloud risk picture.

What makes Fencer's approach different:

  • Detection across your codebase. Fencer scans for over 200 secret patterns across all your repositories, catching credentials that developers may not realize are sensitive.
  • Risk-based prioritization. A leaked AWS root key in a public repository is a different urgency than a test API key in a private staging repo. Fencer considers exposure context, secret type, and the permissions the credential grants to prioritize remediation.
  • Compliance evidence. Every detection and remediation generates evidence for your SOC 2 and ISO 27001 controls related to credential management.