What is Azure Key Vault?

Azure Key Vault is a cloud service for securely storing and accessing secrets, keys, and certificates. Secrets: store connection strings, passwords, API keys, and other sensitive configuration values — retrieved by applications at runtime instead of hardcoding them. Keys: create and control cryptographic keys used for encryption; optionally backed by HSMs (Hardware Security Modules). Certificates: manage, provision, and deploy SSL/TLS certificates. Access is controlled via Azure AD and RBAC. Applications authenticate to Key Vault using Managed Identities (no credentials required in code). All access is logged in Azure Monitor. Key Vault is a fundamental security building block — every Azure application should store its secrets in Key Vault rather than configuration files or environment variables.