AWS Key Management Service vs Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Secret Management

AWS Key Management Service creates and controls cryptographic keys for data encryption and digital signatures. It centralizes key lifecycles and permissions, including separate control over administrators and key users. KMS supports symmetric encryption, asymmetric signing or encryption pairs, and HMAC generation and verification. The AWS Encryption SDK can use KMS as a key provider for local application encryption and decryption. Integrations include Amazon S3, EBS, RDS, DynamoDB, Lambda, and CloudTrail. With CloudTrail enabled, requests can record the user, time, API action, and key. AWS says hardware security modules validated to FIPS 140-3 Security Level 3 protect key material and operations, with plaintext keys kept only in volatile HSM memory. Multi-Region keys support cross-Region workflows; external key stores keep material in a customer-managed external manager. KMS scales with demand but has default key and request limits. The listed plan is $1 a month per KMS key, prorated hourly.

Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Secret Management stores, retrieves, rotates, and manages credentials used by applications and cloud environments. It supports database passwords, access tokens, third-party API keys, SSH private keys, application configuration secrets, and OAuth2 or JWT signing credentials. Administrators and applications can access secrets through APIs, SDKs, the CLI, and OCI Console. OCI Vault keys encrypt secrets, while OCI manages encryption, decryption, access control, and audit logging; OCI IAM policies provide granular permissions. Automatic rotation can run at intervals from one to 12 months and integrates with Autonomous AI Database and OCI Functions. Secrets can be replicated to as many as three destination regions, where replicas are read-only and inherit changes from the source. A tenancy can contain up to 5,000 secrets, with up to 30 active versions and 30 versions pending deletion per secret. The service is aimed at applications and cloud environments that need centrally managed secrets rather than credentials embedded in source code or configuration files. It is listed as free, though no price is provided.