Summary

The provided content outlines a step-by-step process for retrieving secrets from Azure Key Vault using Azure Logic Apps, including authentication with Managed Identity, configuring Key Vault access policies, and executing the logic app to obtain the secret.

Abstract

The article "Azure — Fetch Key Vault Secrets Using Logic Apps" provides a detailed guide on how to securely access secrets stored in Azure Key Vault through the use of Azure Logic Apps. It begins by explaining the necessity of using Managed Identity for authentication, ensuring that the logic app can be securely authenticated to the Key Vault without storing credentials. The guide then proceeds to demonstrate how to configure access policies within the Key Vault to grant the logic app the necessary permissions to retrieve secrets. The final steps involve setting up a recurrence trigger in the logic app and using the "Get secret" activity to fetch the desired secret. The article emphasizes the security benefits of using Managed Identity and the ease of integrating Key Vault with Logic Apps for automated secret retrieval. It concludes with a tip on how to secure the output to prevent the secret value from being exposed in the logic app's output.

Opinions

The author suggests that using Managed Identity for authentication is advantageous as it leverages Azure Active Directory, eliminating the need for storing and managing credentials.
The article implies that the integration between Azure Logic Apps and Key Vault is user-friendly and beneficial for automating tasks that require secure access to sensitive information.
The author highlights the importance of securing the output of the logic app to protect sensitive data, indicating a best practice for security-conscious operations.
By providing a link to a related article, the author conveys that this guide is part of a broader set of instructions for working with Azure services, suggesting a comprehensive approach to Azure automation and orchestration.

Azure — Fetch Key Vault Secrets Using Logic Apps

Step-by-step guide on how to fetch a secret from azure key vault using logic apps.

Using Azure Logic Apps, it is possible to retrieve secrets from an Azure key vault. You can then use the secret for any custom scenarios such as passing it to an Azure Data Factory pipeline or to a databricks notebook.

Below are the steps to get a key vault’s secret using logic app —

1. Create a New Logic App And Configure

Upon creating a blank logic app, go to Identity property. Turn the status On. This is done because logic app will be authenticated to Key vault using Azure’s Managed Identity.

Notedown the Object Id.

Get secret from key vault using logic app

An advantage to using managed identity is that Azure uses Active Directory (AD) to authenticate a resource.

2. Add Logic App to Key Vault

At the key vault location, go to Access Policies. Click create to add a new access policy.

Next, select the checkboxes Get and List under Secret Permissions section. Since we are only fetching secrets and going through the list of secrets, we will select Get and List.

On the next screen, add the object id which we copied from Step 1. This will add Logic App as the user of the access policy.

After we complete this step, click Review + Create.

3. Get Secret Using Logic App

Go back to Step 1 where we created a blank logic app. I selected recurrence as the trigger for my logic app. Next, search for Key vault and choose Get secret activity.

Azure key vault get secret with logic apps

The logic app should automatically show you the list of secrets. From the list, you can select the secret name whose value you’d like to retrieve. For the purpose of this article, I created a secret called testsecret with value as mysecretvalue.

With the secret selected, let’s run the pipeline to check results.

As we can see above, we were successfully able to get the value of a secret from the key vault.

TIP

If you would like to secure the value of the secret in the output, select the 3 dots on the Get secret activity.

Click settings and then turn on Secure Outputs. This will not show the secret value in the output of Logic apps.

And that’s the end of this article. If you would like to further send the secret value to an ADF pipeline as a parameter, you can do so by following my other article where I explained that process in detail.

How To Execute Azure Data Factory Pipeline From Logic Apps

This article explains how to call or trigger Azure Data Factory from Logic Apps and pass parameters to it.

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