How-To: Encrypt application state

    Encrypt application state at rest to provide stronger security in enterprise workloads or regulated environments. Dapr offers automatic client-side encryption based on in Galois/Counter Mode (GCM), supporting keys of 128, 192, and 256-bits.

    In addition to automatic encryption, Dapr supports primary and secondary encryption keys to make it easier for developers and ops teams to enable a key rotation strategy. This feature is supported by all Dapr state stores.

    The encryption keys are always fetched from a secret, and cannot be supplied as plaintext values on the section.

    Add the following metadata section to any Dapr supported state store:

    You now have a Dapr state store configured to fetch the encryption key from a secret named , containing the actual encryption key in a key named mykey.

    The actual encryption key must be a valid, hex-encoded encryption key. While 192-bit and 256-bit keys are supported, it’s recommended you use 128-bit encryption keys. Dapr errors and exists if the encryption key is invalid.

    For example, you can generate a random, hex-encoded 128-bit (16-byte) key with:

    Note that the secret store does not have to support keys.

    When Dapr starts, it fetches the secrets containing the encryption keys listed in the section. Dapr automatically knows which state item has been encrypted with which key, as it appends the secretKeyRef.name field to the end of the actual state key.

    To rotate a key,

    1. Change the to point to a secret containing your new key.

    New data will be encrypted using the new key, and any retrieved old data will be decrypted using the secondary key.

    Any updates to data items encrypted with the old key will be re-encrypted using the new key.

    Note