Secrets management is a practice that allows developers to securely store sensitive data such as passwords, keys, and tokens, in a secure environment with strict access controls.
A common person connected to the internet must use a few dozen of passwords. Using a different password for each service and memorize all of them without writing it down it is not always possible. Some usual methods to write it down (papersheet out of a vault, unprotected Excel file, etc.) are not safe at all.
One solution that helps to write it down in a safe way is a password manager, password vault, or credential manager.
Most password vaults use PBKDF2 or Bcrypt to convert the vault’s password into a reasonably strong encryption key.
These terms are related to Credential management system (CMS).
A secret manager is a more general application than password manager.
Credential Management Level 1 API is published by W3C. It is used by many browsers and federation services
Identity as a Service (IDaaS) provides capabilities such as account provisioning, management, authentication, authorization reporting, and monitoring.
A hardware security module (HSM) is hardware based instead of software based, and it is the safest way to store credentials within a CMS. You can read more about HSM on this post.
List of Secrets Management Applications
You can find a list of credential management applications on this post.