We Already Use Azure Key Vault. Why Would We Need IBM Vault?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard the same question in several customer conversations:

It’s a very fair question.

And my answer is: You may not need to replace Azure Key Vault at all.

The more interesting question is whether Azure Key Vault is solving the entire secrets-management problem across your enterprise — particularly when your infrastructure extends beyond Azure.

First, this isn't really Azure Key Vault vs. IBM Vault

Azure Key Vault is an excellent Azure-native service for protecting secrets, encryption keys and certificates.

If most of your applications and infrastructure live within the Microsoft Azure ecosystem, Azure Key Vault can be an excellent choice.

But today's enterprise infrastructure rarely stops at the boundary of one cloud.

A typical organization may have:

Azure + AWS + on-premises infrastructure + Kubernetes + SQL Server + Oracle + Linux + SaaS platforms + thousands of applications and machine identities.

And that's where the conversation becomes more interesting.

IBM Vault (previously known as HashiCorp Vault) addresses a broader question:

How do we consistently secure and control secrets and machine-to-machine access across heterogeneous infrastructure?

Here are five areas worth considering.

1. Don't just protect a password. Ask whether the password needs to exist permanently.

This is perhaps the most important difference.

In a traditional secrets-management model, an application may need access to a database.

A password is created, stored securely in a vault, retrieved by the application and periodically rotated.

That's certainly better than hardcoding the password.

But the password is still a long-lived credential.

IBM Vault introduces another model: dynamic secrets.

Instead of retrieving the same stored database credential repeatedly, an application can authenticate to Vault and request access.

Vault can then generate a unique database credential with a defined lifetime — perhaps one hour.

When that lease expires, the credential can be revoked.

So instead of:

Application → Retrieve stored password → Database

we can move toward:

Application → Authenticate → Vault → Generate temporary credential → Database → Credential expires

That changes the security conversation considerably.

The goal isn't simply to store secrets more securely.

The goal is to reduce the number of long-lived secrets we need in the first place.

2. Azure isn't always the whole enterprise

Azure Key Vault naturally integrates very well with Microsoft's ecosystem.

But consider the environment of a large enterprise or financial institution.

You may have applications running in Azure, workloads in another cloud, Kubernetes clusters, Oracle and SQL databases, Linux servers, legacy applications and infrastructure inside your own data centres.

Now ask:

How are secrets being managed across all of those environments?

You may discover multiple vaults, scripts, configuration files, CI/CD variables, service-account passwords and credentials maintained by different teams.

IBM Vault can provide a common secrets-management layer across these environments.

That doesn't mean Azure Key Vault disappears.

It means the organization gains the option of applying a more consistent secrets-management model beyond Azure.

3. The bigger problem is becoming machine identity

For years, cybersecurity conversations focused heavily on human identities:

Who is the user?

Should they have access?

Do they have MFA?

What happens when they leave the company?

But modern infrastructure introduces another enormous identity population:

Machines.

Applications talking to databases.

Microservices talking to APIs.

CI/CD pipelines provisioning infrastructure.

Kubernetes workloads accessing cloud services.

Automation platforms communicating with production systems.

Each interaction needs authentication.

And behind many of those interactions are credentials.

This is where secrets management starts becoming a machine identity and access problem, rather than simply a secure-password-storage problem.

Vault can authenticate workloads, apply policies and issue short-lived credentials based on identity.

That's an architectural shift worth considering.

4. Dynamic credentials can extend across different platforms

Vault's secrets engines can work with different types of infrastructure.

Depending on the target system, Vault can dynamically generate or manage credentials for databases, cloud platforms, PKI certificates, SSH access and other systems.

Think about the operational difference.

Instead of creating thousands of permanent credentials and then building processes to protect, rotate and eventually revoke them, organizations can increasingly move toward:

Authenticate → Authorize → Issue → Use → Expire

That is a fundamentally different credential lifecycle.

And for security teams pursuing Zero Trust principles, reducing standing privileges and long-lived credentials can be extremely valuable.

5. Complement, rather than replace

This is probably the biggest misconception I encounter.

Deploying IBM Vault does not automatically mean migrating every secret out of Azure Key Vault.

There can be a complementary architecture.

Azure-native applications can continue consuming secrets through Azure Key Vault where that makes architectural sense.

Vault can provide broader secrets lifecycle management across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure.

Vault Enterprise also supports synchronizing secrets into Azure Key Vault, allowing organizations to maintain Azure-native consumption patterns while introducing centralized secrets management where appropriate.

So the architecture could look conceptually like:

IBM Vault

↓ Central secrets lifecycle and policy

Azure Key Vault | Cloud Platforms | Kubernetes | Databases | On-Prem Applications

The objective isn't another vault for the sake of having another vault.

The objective is consistent control over secrets and machine identities wherever workloads run.

So, do you need IBM Vault if you already have Azure Key Vault?

Maybe.

If your environment is predominantly Azure-native and Azure Key Vault already addresses your security and operational requirements, introducing another platform simply for the sake of technology would make little sense.

But if you're operating across hybrid cloud, multiple clouds, Kubernetes, databases and legacy infrastructure, I'd ask a different set of questions:

How many long-lived credentials exist across your organization today?

Who owns their rotation?

How many service accounts have passwords that haven't changed in months — or years?

How are database credentials issued and revoked?

How are Kubernetes workloads authenticating to external systems?

What happens to credentials created outside Azure?

Can you centrally audit the lifecycle of machine credentials across your enterprise?

If answering those questions becomes difficult, then the conversation is no longer:

“Azure Key Vault or IBM Vault?”

It becomes:

“How do we build an enterprise-wide strategy for secrets and machine identity?”

And that's where IBM Vault becomes very interesting.

Nazeer Aval

Founder & CEO, Resemble Systems

Infrastructure & Security Lifecycle Management | IBM Vault