Vault-Based Secret Management and Zero-Trust Security Model for Distributed Financial Applications

Abstract The rapid growth of distributed financial applications has increased the need for secure secret management mechanisms capable of protecting API credentials, encryption keys, and authentication tokens across cloud-native environments. Conventional credential storage approaches expose enterprise systems to insider threats, unauthorized access, credential leakage, and configuration vulnerabilities. This study proposed a vault-based zero-trust security framework for distributed financial applications operating within Kubernetes and microservice infrastructures. The framework integrated dynamic credential generation, automated secret rotation, encrypted inter-service communication, identity-driven access policies, and runtime monitoring mechanisms for cloud-native financial services. The experimental evaluation analyzed authentication accuracy, secret exposure reduction, transaction integrity, API communication security, and unauthorized access prevention under distributed financial workloads. The results demonstrated improvements in credential protection, runtime visibility, encrypted communication reliability, and policy-controlled access validation compared to traditional static credential architectures. The proposed framework supports secure financial transaction processing and centralized security management within distributed cloud infrastructure.