secrets-store-csi-driver VS secrets-store-csi-driver-provider-gcp

I'm not a fan of this approach. I think the Secrets Store CSI Driver (https://secrets-store-csi-driver.sigs.k8s.io/) has a better approach.

Secret Store CSI Driver is what we're playing with now. Pretty excellent.

If you deploy on k8s, keep your eye on https://secrets-store-csi-driver.sigs.k8s.io/

Considering the major limitations of using Kubernetes Secrets, there are many new approaches being developed by the Kubernetes community. Kubernetes SIGs like the Secrets Store CSI Driver and solutions like the external secrets operator that works with third-party secret managers, and options to seal secrets through tools like bitnami’s sealed-secrets. To skip the tools and move directly to best practices, click here.

Just to clarify, CSI secret driver is from cncf not Microsoft. Only msft piece is the portion that integrates with key vault. https://secrets-store-csi-driver.sigs.k8s.io/

https://secrets-store-csi-driver.sigs.k8s.io/ and https://developer.hashicorp.com/vault/tutorials/kubernetes/kubernetes-secret-store-driver

The Secrets Store CSI Driver is a native upstream Kubernetes driver that can be used to abstract where the secret is stored from the workload. If you want to use a cloud provider's secret manager without exposing the secrets as Kubernetes Secret objects, you can use the CSI Driver to mount secrets as volumes in your pods. This is a great option if you use a cloud provider to host your Kubernetes cluster. The driver supports many cloud providers and can be used with different secret managers.

If you want security they are both bad, use something like the secret manager of your choice API directly in your app or https://secrets-store-csi-driver.sigs.k8s.io/ this will keep the actual secrets out of etcd and env vars and give you more security

The driver can also sync changes to secrets. The driver currently supports Vault, AWS, Azure, and GCP providers. Secrets Store CSI Driver can also sync provider secrets as Kubernetes secrets; if required, this behavior needs to be explicitly enabled during installation.

GCP SS-CSI driver

That's interesting actually, Google provides their own rpvider for the Secrets Store CSI Driver: https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/secrets-store-csi-driver-provider-gcp

Consider: if you have a tool like terraform managing your infra components including your data layer, you likely want to manage those reaources in a different lifecycle from your application code. Applications may also likely managed using a different toolset (kubectl, helm, scaffold, etc.). In this case, secret Manager acts as the secure configuration bridge between the tools, keeping the secrets out of human hands. As certs and passwords are generated on the infra side, those values can be stored as secrets in SM. Application workloads - backed by service accounts having access to read the secret - can decrypt during launch and use the secret as needed. You can use common patterns in both GKE (via thesecrets store csi driver ) and Cloud Run for consuming secrets in this way.

I prefer https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/secrets-store-csi-driver-provider-gcp