Kubernetes Secrets configuration in different deployment scenarios

Throughout the software development life cycle (SDLC), a team might use different environments to test their increments before releasing them to production. Just as with a production deployment, any other deployment on another environment will have certain configuration requirements, including Secrets.

Secret usage among environments

When it comes to Secrets, we need to ensure their durability and integrity regardless of the environment. Having different handling of Secrets in different environments can cause issues in the long term, and the team will not be able to fully validate the security implications of choices on secret handling.

Provided the environments have differences due to cost-saving requirements or because a full installation brings more overhead, Secrets need to be securely stored. There might be cases where Secrets might be shared. An example can be a proprietary key of an external SaaS service...