Vault
Identity secrets engine
The identity secrets engine is the identity management solution for Vault. It
internally maintains the clients who are recognized by Vault. Each client is
internally termed as an Entity. An entity can have multiple Aliases. For
example, a single user who has accounts in both GitHub and LDAP, can be mapped
to a single entity in Vault that has 2 aliases, one of type GitHub and one of
type LDAP. When a client authenticates successfully via any of the credential backends
(except the Token backend), Vault creates a new entity and attaches a new
alias to it, if a corresponding entity doesn't already exist. The entity identifier will
be tied to the authenticated token. When such tokens are put to use, their
entity identifiers are audit logged, marking a trail of actions performed by
specific users.
Identity store allows operators to manage the entities in Vault. Entities can be created and aliases can be tied to entities, via the ACL'd API. There can be policies set on the entities which adds capabilities to the tokens that are tied to entity identifiers. The capabilities granted to tokens via the entities are an addition to the existing capabilities of the token and not a replacement. The capabilities of the token that get inherited from entities are computed dynamically at request time. This provides flexibility in controlling the access of tokens that are already issued.
NOTE: This secrets engine will be mounted by default. This secrets engine cannot be disabled or moved. For more conceptual overview on identity, refer to the Identity documentation.
The Vault Identity secrets engine supports several different features. Each one is individually documented on its own page.
API
The Identity secrets engine has a full HTTP API. Please see the Identity secrets engine API for more details.
Additionally, Vault can be configured as an OIDC identity provider. Please see the OIDC identity provider API for more details.