Secure Configuration Management with Spring Cloud Config Server

Spring Cloud Config Server

## I've implemented a Microservice architecture where I've leveraged Spring Cloud Config Server for managing externalized configurations. To ensure the security of sensitive data, I needed a solution for encrypting and decrypting configurations before storing them on GitHub. Fortunately, Spring Cloud Config Server offers robust encryption and decryption capabilities out of the box.

Here's how I implemented encryption using the Symmetric key method:

Generated a 32-character alphanumeric encryption key.
Added the encryption key to my configServer-service application.properties file:

`encrypt.key = ${ENCRYPT_KEY}`

Note: ${ENCRYPT_KEY} references the value stored in the 'ENCRYPT_KEY' environmental variable.

Encrypted sensitive data using the command:
`curl localhost:8888/encrypt -d 'my-sensitive-password`

Updated my Microservices configurations stored on GitHub using the Config Server to include:
`spring.datasource.password={cipher}encrypted-value`

For detailed guidance, I found the following resources invaluable:

https://medium.com/@karthi32.mail/spring-cloud-config-server-encryption-and-decryption-using-git-repository-d8d1a7a1e6eb
https://docs.spring.io/spring-cloud-config/docs/current/reference/html/#_encryption_and_decryption
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRrcewwT6bY

These references provided comprehensive insights into effectively managing secure configurations with Spring Cloud Config Server.