What Is Akeyless?
Akeyless is an identity security platform that protects the credentials, keys, and certificates that modern applications and systems use to authenticate and authorize access. The platform centralizes identity management for both human and machine users and applies consistent controls across distributed environments.
Akeyless provides a single cloud-based control plane that supports application-to-application authentication, certificate issuance, privileged access, and automated identity workflows in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Core Purpose
Akeyless enables organizations to control human and machine identities at scale. Identities include secrets, dynamic credentials, certificates, and encryption keys. These identities are critical for securing communication between applications, services, infrastructure, and automated workloads.
The platform provides a unified workflow for creating, retrieving, issuing, rotating, and enforcing policies on these identities, reducing the operational challenges of managing identity material across distributed systems.
Vaultless Architecture
Akeyless uses a Vaultless architecture, which avoids storing sensitive key material or secrets in a retrievable form. Unlike traditional vault systems that rely on encrypted storage backends, Akeyless performs operations without persisting complete private keys or long-lived secrets. This design removes the storage layer as an attack surface and reduces the operational overhead associated with maintaining vault servers.
A deeper explanation of the architecture and its security properties is available in the Vaultless Architecture section.
Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC)
Distributed Fragments Cryptography (DFC) is the cryptographic framework that enables the Vaultless architecture. Instead of storing full encryption keys, DFC divides key material into multiple independent fragments. No single system ever holds the complete key, and an optional customer-held fragment allows organizations to retain exclusive control over critical operations.
Platform Components
Akeyless consists of several cooperating components:
- Akeyless Platform — The SaaS control plane that manages authentication, authorization, policy evaluation, and orchestration of identity operations.
- Akeyless Gateway — A lightweight component deployed in customer environments to access private networks, integrate with on-premises systems, and optionally handle customer-controlled key fragments.
- Connectors — Integrations that support dynamic credentials, rotation workflows, and communication with cloud providers, databases, and other external targets.
- Client Tools — The CLI, SDKs, and REST API used by applications and administrators to request identity operations.
These components work together to enforce identity security with no requirement to store or reconstruct complete secrets or private keys.
Primary Capabilities
Akeyless supports several categories of identity workloads:
Secrets Management
Manage static secrets, rotated secrets, and dynamic credentials through a centralized interface.
Certificate Authority & PKI Services
Issue short-lived X.509 certificates through APIs and automation frameworks such as cert-manager.
SSH Certificate Issuance
Replace long-lived SSH keys with short-lived just-in-time certificates.
Encryption & Key Management
Perform encryption, decryption, signing, and key lifecycle operations without exposing full private keys.
Secure Remote Access
Provide zero-trust privileged access to internal systems without distributing long-lived credentials.
AI & ML Workload Security
Provide short-lived credentials and secure retrieval patterns for AI pipelines, automated agents, and model-serving systems.
Leaked Secret Detection & Response
Detect potential exposures through audit visibility and respond with automated or emergency rotation.
Supported Environments
Akeyless operates consistently across:
- Public cloud environments
- Hybrid and multi-cloud deployments
- On-premises infrastructure
- Kubernetes and other container platforms
- Serverless environments
Summary
Akeyless is a unified identity security platform built to protect the credentials, keys, and certificates used across modern infrastructure. Its Vaultless and distributed-cryptography design eliminates reliance on stored secrets, enabling secure, scalable identity operations across diverse environments.
Updated about 5 hours ago