<p>With a Kubernetes cluster in place, what would be the alternative way to send configurations/passwords into containers? I know about the secrets way but what I'm looking for is a centralised environment that has the password encrypted, not base64 encoded.</p>

<p>You could also consider <strong>Kamus</strong> (and <strong><a href="https://kamus.soluto.io/docs/user/crd/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">KamusSecret</a></strong>, see at the end):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>An open source, GitOps, zero-trust secrets encryption and decryption solution for Kubernetes applications.</p>
<p>Kamus enable users to easily encrypt secrets than can be decrypted only by the application running on Kubernetes.<br />
The encryption is done using strong encryption providers (currently supported: Azure KeyVault, Google Cloud KMS and AES).<br />
To learn more about Kamus, check out the <a href="https://blog.solutotlv.com/can-kubernetes-keep-a-secret?utm_source=github" rel="nofollow noreferrer">blog post</a> and <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/SolutoTLV/can-kubernetes-keep-a-secret" rel="nofollow noreferrer">slides</a>.</p>
<pre><code>helm repo add soluto https://charts.soluto.io
helm upgrade --install kamus soluto/kamus
</code></pre>
<p>Architecture: Kamus has 3 components:</p>
<ul>
<li>Encrypt API</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Decrypt API</li>
<li>Key Management System (KMS)</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
<p>The encrypt and decrypt APIs handle encryption and decryption requests. The KMS is a wrapper for various cryptographic solutions. Currently supported:</p>
<ul>
<li>AES - uses one key for all secrets</li>
<li>Azure KeyVault - creates one key per service account.</li>
<li>Google Cloud KMS - creates one key per service account.</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
<hr />
<p>As noted by <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/users/4792970/omer-levi-hevroni">Omer Levi Hevroni</a> in <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54542638/kubernetes-with-secrets-alternative/54832340#comment102010506_54832340">the comments</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We are not planning to support env vars directly, as there are some security issues with using them.<br />
As an alternative, you can use <strong><a href="https://kamus.soluto.io/docs/user/crd/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">KamusSecret</a></strong> to create a regular secret and mount it</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p>KamusSecret works very similary to regular secret encryption flow with Kamus.<br />
The encrypted data is represented in a format that is identical to regular Kubernetes Secrets.<br />
Kamus will create an identical secret with the decrypted content.</p>
</blockquote>
