Marcel Lupo

Best Practices for Using GitHub Secrets

Stop storing long-lived credentials as GitHub secrets. Use OIDC and Azure Key Vault to build a truly passwordless and more secure CI/CD pipeline.

Best Practices for Using GitHub Secrets
#1about 2 minutes

Understanding the fundamentals of GitHub Secrets

GitHub Secrets provide an encrypted way to store sensitive data like API keys within repositories for use in CI/CD workflows.

#2about 6 minutes

Managing secrets at different scopes in the UI

Secrets can be managed at the repository, environment, or organization level through the UI, but repository-level secrets become difficult to rotate at scale.

#3about 5 minutes

Consuming secrets in workflows and avoiding common pitfalls

Reference secrets in GitHub Actions using the `secrets` context, but be aware of pitfalls like hard-coding, commit history exposure, and improper access control.

#4about 5 minutes

Integrating GitHub with Azure Key Vault for centralization

Use Azure Key Vault as a centralized secret store to manage secrets outside of GitHub, improving scalability and separating access controls.

#5about 7 minutes

Configuring passwordless authentication using OpenID Connect

Set up a federated identity in Azure Entra ID with OpenID Connect to allow GitHub Actions to authenticate to Azure without long-lived secrets.

#6about 7 minutes

Fetching Azure Key Vault secrets in a GitHub workflow

Use the `azure/login` action with OIDC to authenticate, then use Azure CLI within a workflow to retrieve secrets from Key Vault for subsequent steps.

#7about 4 minutes

Key benefits of the Azure Key Vault integration

Integrating with Azure Key Vault provides centralized management, granular RBAC, secret versioning and history, and enhanced auditing capabilities.

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