Ask HN: How does your company manage its encryption keys?

How paranoid do you want your security to be?

In general I would suggest using a key vault. AWS, GCP, and Azure all have cloud versions that are backed by virtual HSM's built on top of actual physical HSM's. For the vast majority of usages they're good enough. Use admin account management to enforce 2FA/FIDO for all AWS/Azure/GCP logins. (You should be enforcing 2FA with phone/FIDO auth anyway.)

If you need truly paranoid backups, you can back the key up onto a portable hard drive that you lock in a safe in the closet, with a few key people who know the code.

I recommend against using a (cloud-synced) password manager. Cloud key vaults do the same thing but offer specific features relevant to server stuff. And if you want more paranoia, a physical safe is probably safer than extending your attack surface to a cloud-synced password manager.

Also: make sure that you set up a ~quarterly ritual of opening and verifying the backup. For crucial backup fallback systems, you want to make sure you actually use the system so that you know if it fails.

We have a main config/setup git repository which contains keys (and passwords) in git-crypt. 4 people have GPG keys able to decrypt it, and this is used in normal operation for deployment (i.e. for ansible to feed the keys into systems.) The repo is cloned in quite a few places.

None of our secret material is particularly hard to revoke or replace; we don't run an internal CA or anything like that.

I think it really matters how sensitive these keys are.

It's been quite a few years since I interacted with them, but for some keys there is a server somewhere with an HSM installed, and two people have credentials for it. If you need something signed you send it to them, with a justification for why it needs to be signed with the real keys, and they will send you a path to get the signed file, and remind you to delete the signed file when you no longer need it.

This is overkill for some things, and probably would be considered sloppy for others.

If this is a public repo then you are already hacked.

There are multiple automated systems that scan public repos for credentials. 5 minutes later you are mining bitcoins for them.

I try to push as much to certificate auth as possible. Internal CA keys are stored on an offline USB HSM, which is locked in a cabinet. Access to the key requires 2/10 individuals to be physically present.

There are different CAs for different purposes. There's an intermediate for device management, and another for user or service auth purposes.