Secrets management for Docker and Kubernetes

Keep encrypted secrets out of your images, Compose files, and manifests, and inject them into containers at runtime.

Manage Docker and Kubernetes secrets by keeping plaintext out of your images and manifests and injecting encrypted values at runtime instead. Envless encrypts every variable on your device before upload, so your registry, Git history, and cluster never store readable secrets. Pull decrypted values into a container at startup with the CLI, or generate a Kubernetes Secret from an environment you already manage. Every environment (local, staging, production, CI) reads from the same encrypted source of truth, role-based access runs across 44 workspace permissions with private products fenced off to the members you name, and every variable carries an attributed change history.

Where Docker & Kubernetes secrets get painful

  • Secrets passed through ENV or ARG get baked into image layers, where anyone can read them with docker history or by pulling the image from a registry.
  • .env files mounted into Compose or committed next to manifests leak through Git history, build caches, and CI logs.
  • Kubernetes Secrets are only Base64-encoded, not encrypted, so anyone with cluster or etcd access can read them unless you wire up encryption at rest yourself.
  • Keeping local, staging, production, and CI env vars in sync across containers is manual, and there is rarely an audit trail for who changed what.

Manage secrets for Docker & Kubernetes with Envless

  1. 1

    Store each environment encrypted, not in the repo

    Create a project and add an environment (local, staging, production, CI) per deployment target. Values are encrypted client-side before upload, so the server only ever holds ciphertext, and nothing readable lands in Git or your registry.

  2. 2

    Inject secrets at container runtime

    Wrap your process with the CLI so decrypted variables are loaded into the environment at startup and never written into an image layer. Use it as your container entrypoint instead of an .env file or ENV directives. 

    ENTRYPOINT ["envless", "run", "--", "node", "server.js"]
  3. 3

    Or pull into a file at boot for tooling that needs one

    When a process expects an .env file, pull it at startup into the container's writable layer or a tmpfs mount, then start the app. The file is generated on boot and never committed or baked into the image. 

    envless sync --env production && npm start
  4. 4

    Feed a Kubernetes Secret from a managed environment

    Render the environment to an .env file in your pipeline and create the Secret from it, so the source of truth stays encrypted in Envless and only the cluster sees the materialized Secret. 

    envless sync --env production
kubectl create secret generic app-secrets --from-env-file=.env.production
  5. 5

    Scope access and track every change

    Use role-based access control and private products so CI holds a key that developers do not, and rely on versioning plus the attributed change history to see who changed which variable and when. Every runner reads the same encrypted source of truth.

Docker & Kubernetes secrets FAQ

Common questions about using Envless with this stack.

Encrypted. A Kubernetes Secret is only Base64-encoded, which is encoding, not encryption, so anyone with cluster or etcd access can decode it. In Envless, every value is encrypted on your device before upload and the server stores only ciphertext. You materialize a Kubernetes Secret only at deploy time, from a source that was never stored in plaintext.

Use the CLI as your entrypoint so values are injected into the process environment at startup (envless run -- <command>), or pull them into an .env file on boot for tools that require one. Either way nothing is written into an image layer, so docker history and registry pulls reveal no secrets.

Yes. Authenticate with an API key as a Bearer token against the REST API at api.envless.cloud, or use the CLI in your build step to pull the correct environment. Each run fetches fresh, so a pipeline always reads the current values, and every change to a variable is recorded in its attributed history.

Yes. Envless is runtime-agnostic at the container level via the CLI, and it ships a typed SDK for TypeScript, Node, Bun, and Deno, plus a REST API for every other language if you prefer to load variables in-process.

Get Started

Ship secrets, not chaos.

Start free today and discover why developers trust Envless for end-to-end encrypted, versioned secrets across every environment.