Key Vault as backing store of Azure Functions

If you have used Azure function, you probably are aware that Azure Functions leverages a Storage Account underneath to support the file storage (where the function app code resides as Azure File share) and also as a backing store to keep Functions Keys (the secrets that are used in Function invocations).

Figure: Storage Account containers – “azure-webjobs-secrets”

If you look inside the container there are files with following contents:

Figure: These JSON files has the function keys

Figure: Encrypted master keys  and other function keys

I have been in a conversation where; it was not appreciated to see the keys stored in the storage account. The security and governance team was seeking for a better place to keep these keys. Where secrets can be further restricted from developer access.

Of course, we can create a VNET around the storage accountand use private link but that has some other consequence as the content (functions implementations artifacts) stored also into the storage account. Configuring two separate storage account can address this better, however, this can make the setup complicated than it has to be.
A better option could be to store this keys into a Key Vault as backing store – which is a great feature of Azure functions, but I’ve found few people are aware of this due to lack of documentations. In this article I will show you how to move these secrets to a Key Vault.

To do so, we need to configure few Application Settings into the Function App. They are given below:

Once you have configured the above settings, you need to enable Managed Identity on your Azure Function. You will have to accomplish that in Identity section under platform features tab. That is a much better option in my opinion as we don’t need to maintain any more secrets to talk to Key vault securely. Go ahead and turn the system identity toggle on. This will create a service principal with the same name as Azure Function application you have.

Figure: Enabling system assigned managed identity on Function app
Next step is to add a rule to the key vault’s access policies for the service principal created in earlier step.

Figure: Key vault Access policy
That’s it, hit your function app now and you will see the keys are stored inside the Key vault. You can safely delete the container from the storage account now.

Figure: Secrets are stored in Key Vault

Hope this will save time when you are concerned to keep the keys in storage account.
The Azure Function is open sourced and is in GitHub. You can have a look into the sources and see other interesting ideas that you may play with.