What is HashiCorp Vault and how does it work? 

1)Secure Secret Storage: Arbitrary key/value secrets can be stored in Vault. Vault encrypts these secrets before writing them to persistent storage, so gaining access to the raw storage isn’t enough to access your secrets.
2)Dynamic Secrets: Vault can generate secrets on-demand for some systems, such as AWS or SQL databases. For example, when an application needs to access an S3 bucket, it asks Vault for credentials, and Vault will generate an AWS keypair with valid permissions on demand.
3)Data Encryption: Vault can encrypt and decrypt data without storing it. This allows security teams to define encryption parameters and developers to store encrypted data in a location such as SQL without having to design their own encryption methods.
4)Leasing and Renewal: All secrets in Vault have a lease associated with them. At the end of the lease, Vault will automatically revoke that secret. Clients can renew leases via built-in renew APIs.
5)Revocation: Vault has built-in support for secret revocation. Vault can revoke not only single secrets, but a tree of secrets, for example, all secrets read by a specific user, or all secrets of a particular type. Revocation assists in key rolling as well as locking down systems in the case of an intrusion.

Competitors and Alternatives to HashiCorp Vault

• Secret Server.
• CyberArk Privileged Access Management solutions.
• ARCON | Privileged Access Management.
• ManageEngine Password Manager Pro.
• BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access.
• WALLIX Bastion.
• Symantec Privileged Access Management.
• One Identity Safeguard