Article

IBM Vault on AWS: Security That Scales

November 04, 2026

While AWS makes it easy for customers to build quickly, it can also make it easy to lose track of the credentials they build with.

As AWS adoption grows, secrets end up scattered across repositories, pipelines and services. That leads to configuration drift, inconsistent access controls and hours of engineering time lost to manual fixes. Long-lived access keys sit in code and need constant rotation, and the stakes are high: IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025 found that 53% of breaches involved compromised personally identifiable information.

For IBM partners, that’s a clear and credible problem to solve, and IBM Vault has been built specifically to solve it.

How IBM Vault works with AWS

IBM Vault sits between applications and AWS services, issuing credentials dynamically instead of relying on static ones. It integrates with AWS services including EC2, EKS, ECS, RDS, IAM, KMS and Secrets Manager, and the workflow is fairly straightforward:

An application running on AWS requests access to a database or service. IBM Vault then authenticates the workload using its AWS IAM identity, generates short-lived credentials, then rotates and revokes them automatically. Every action is logged for audit and compliance.

Because credentials expire by design, there is far less for an attacker to steal and far less for teams to maintain. Customers also get encryption as a service, AWS PrivateLink connectivity for a more private connection to their Vault clusters, and secrets sync with AWS Secrets Manager so teams can keep using native workflows while security retains central visibility and control.

Three key features

#1 Proactive risk management: Sentinel's pre-written policies integrate with AWS services to automate security best practices, helping to eliminate misconfigurations and apply policy consistently across multicloud environments.

#2 A stronger compliance posture: IBM Vault and AWS IAM work together to enforce least-privilege access, automate key rotation and centralise audit logging, simplifying governance and evidence gathering.

#3 Advanced zero trust practices: Just-in-time, dynamic secrets remove static credentials and ensure access to cloud resources is authorised and time-limited.

Customer outcomes

IBM Vault has already been rolled out at several large organisations around the globe, bringing about real, tangible business outcomes:

ManTech saved the equivalent of more than 400 employee hours a year by automating credential management and cut security setup and delivery from several months to two to three weeks.¹

Canva eliminated secret sprawl and now secures two million builds and backend secret reads a month, and athenahealth processes more than 300 million requests for secrets a day while resolving availability issues in under 30 minutes.^{2, 3}

For customers moving from on premises to cloud, Duke Energy's six lessons on building a developer platform that scales security and accelerates delivery are a useful conversation starter.⁴

Built for what comes next

Customers are also starting to deploy AI agents on AWS. IBM and HashiCorp have published guidance on building serverless AI agents on AWS using Terraform and Vault for authentication and secrets management, which shows partners how security can be designed in from day one, rather than bolted on later.

The IBM partner opportunity

A problem every AWS customer recognises: Static keys, scattered secrets and manual rotation are common to almost every growing AWS environment, which makes the conversation easy to start.

Quick to demonstrate: A short walkthrough can show the AWS secrets engine generating credentials on demand, testing access and revoking it instantly. It is a vivid proof point that helps customers see the value in minutes.

Works with what customers already use: With native IAM integration and secrets sync to AWS Secrets Manager, IBM Vault builds on existing AWS investment rather than asking customers to change how teams work.

Resilience and scale: IBM Vault supports performance replication and high availability across regions, and IBM has published how HCP Vault Dedicated was designed to maintain data plane resilience during a real AWS regional outage. It is a strong answer for customers whose security tools must be as dependable as their applications.

A route to purchase: IBM Vault is available on the AWS Marketplace, giving customers a familiar way to buy.

Why Arrow for IBM Vault?

As an authorised and experienced IBM distributor, Arrow ECS helps partners build a profitable IBM practice. Our dedicated IBM team provides sales and technical enablement to help you take IBM Vault to market with confidence.

Through Arrow's Experience Centre, Technical Solution Engineers can support demonstrations and custom Proofs of Concept so customers can see IBM Vault working in their own AWS environment. We also support partners with IBM funding, bespoke marketing activities and flexible payment solutions, and our five-step IBM Growth Framework gives you a structured path to sustainable growth.

AWS customers want to move fast without losing control. IBM Vault lets them do both, and with Arrow behind you, you can turn that proposition into a repeatable, growing revenue stream.

To find out more about how Arrow can support your IBM Vault practice, get in touch with our IBM team.