Azure Key Vault is a Microsoft cloud service for storing and managing sensitive material such as secrets, API keys, passwords, certificates, and encryption keys. Instead of hardcoding credentials in source code, configuration files, or deployment scripts, applications can retrieve them from a controlled vault with logging, access policies, and rotation support.
In cyber security, this matters because exposed secrets often become the easiest path into a cloud environment. If an attacker steals a database key or service credential, they may authenticate as the account without bypassing the platform itself. Key Vault helps reduce that risk by keeping high-value secrets out of code and by supporting least-privilege access, managed identities, and orderly rotation. It is commonly used in defenses against credential theft, secret leaks in repositories, and long-lived shared keys that create a single point of failure.