What is AWS Secrets Manager?
A managed service that stores, encrypts, and rotates secrets. Store your database URI, JWT secret, API keys as a JSON secret. Retrieve with the AWS SDK. Costs $0.40 per secret/month. Provides automatic rotation, audit trail, and IAM integration.
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More FAQs in Securing Credentials in Node.js Best Practices for API Keys, Secrets, and Passwords
Use .env files (never commit to Git), generate strong random secrets (crypto.randomBytes), use AWS Secrets Manager for production, use IAM roles on EC2 instead of access keys, use different secrets per environment, never log secrets, and rotate keys regularly.
Create an IAM role with the needed permissions (SES, S3, etc.), attach the role to your EC2 instance. The AWS SDK automatically uses the role's temporary credentials. No access keys in .env, automatic rotation, and least privilege.
Run node -e "console.log(require('crypto').randomBytes(32).toString('hex'))" to generate a 64-character hex string. Never use weak secrets like 'password', 'secret', or 'mykey'. Always use randomly generated strings.
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