A healthcare company is developing a multi-tier web application to manage patient records that are...

Requirement Summary:

Multi-tier app on EC2 + Aurora PostgreSQL

Must comply with least privilege and security policies

Need to manage credentials and API keys securely

Must support key rotation on demand

Evaluate Options:

A. Secrets Manager + AWS managed KMS keys

Best practice for secure secret storage

Supports auto rotation

Uses AWS SDK to fetch at runtime (secure, avoids hardcoding)

AWS managed keys are rotated automatically and easier to manage

B. Secrets Manager + customer managed keys

Also valid, but adds complexity

Since the question asks for LEAST development effort, AWS-managed keys are preferred

C. Store secrets in code

Violates all security best practices

D. Use SSM Parameter Store + AWS managed keys

Possible, but Secrets Manager is preferred when rotation is needed

Parameter Store does not natively rotate secrets

Secrets Manager: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/secretsmanager/latest/userguide/intro.html

Automatic key rotation: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/rotate-keys.html

Best practices for secret management: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/secretsmanager/latest/userguide/best-practices.html