Imagine Azure Key Vault as the mighty lions of Voltron, each protecting a crucial part of the security system. Just as each lion holds an integral part of the robot Voltron, Azure Key Vault holds and protects sensitive information—like passwords, connection strings, and secrets—with the strength and precision of the lions.

In this article, we’ll compare how Azure Key Vault operates like Voltron Lions and dive into a .NET Core example that interacts with Azure Key Vault to securely retrieve secrets. Let’s assemble! The Idea of this console app is to use Azure Key Vault to use the Azure key vault secrets the list all of the files into the directory.

Azure Key Vault: The Lions of Security

Azure Key Vault is essentially a service designed to securely manage and access secrets, encryption keys, and certificates. Like the five lions, it plays several critical roles:

• Green Lion (Secret Management): The green lion protects your secret data (e.g., passwords and API keys).
• Blue Lion (Access Control): Like piloting the Blue Lion, you control who has access to your secrets via Azure’s robust identity services. #ripsven #ogbluelion
• Yellow Lion (Data Encryption): The yellow lion focuses on encrypting and decrypting your data using powerful encryption keys.
• Red Lion (Secure Access): The red lion ensures that only authorized users or apps can retrieve or modify secrets.
• Black Lion (Centralization): The black lion brings them all together, centralizing management to ensure security across your cloud-based applications.

The C# Code: Piloting the Lions

In this example, we will use .NET Core to interact with Azure Key Vault to retrieve sensitive information like usernames and passwords, which could be thought of as the "keys" to assembling Voltron. Here’s a C# program that demonstrates how to connect to Azure Key Vault, retrieve secrets, and process folder contents on your system.

using System;

using System.IO;

using Azure.Identity;

using Azure.Security.KeyVault.Secrets;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;

class Program

{

    static async Task Main(string[] args)

    {

        // Build the configuration from appsettings.json

        var configuration = new ConfigurationBuilder()

            .SetBasePath(AppContext.BaseDirectory)

            .AddJsonFile("appsettings.json", optional: false, reloadOnChange: true)

            .Build();

        // Hardcode the Key Vault URL, secrets' names, and folder path

        string keyVaultUrl = "https://your_azure_keyVault.azure.net/";

        string userNameSecretName = "Zimmer-Secret-UserName";

        string passwordSecretName = "Zimmer-Secret-Password";

        string? folderPath = configuration["FolderPath"];

        // Check if folder exists

        if (Directory.Exists(folderPath))

        {

            Console.WriteLine($"Folder found: {folderPath}");

            try

            {

                // Authenticate and access the secrets

                var client = new SecretClient(new Uri(keyVaultUrl), new DefaultAzureCredential());

                // Retrieve secrets from Key Vault

                KeyVaultSecret userNameSecret = await client.GetSecretAsync(userNameSecretName);

                KeyVaultSecret passwordSecret = await client.GetSecretAsync(passwordSecretName);

                // Display the retrieved secrets

                Console.WriteLine($"UserName: {userNameSecret.Value}");

                Console.WriteLine($"Password: {passwordSecret.Value}");

                // Access the folder and display its content

                string[] files = Directory.GetFiles(folderPath);

                if (files.Length > 0)

                {

                    Console.WriteLine("Files in the folder:");

                    foreach (string file in files)

                    {

                        Console.WriteLine(file);

                    }

                }

                else

                {

                    Console.WriteLine("No files found in the folder.");

                }

            }

            catch (Exception ex)

            {

                Console.WriteLine($"An error occurred while retrieving the secrets: {ex.Message}");

            }

        }

        else

        {

            Console.WriteLine($"Folder not found: {folderPath}");

        }

    }

}