In Apache Airflow 2.0, managing secrets—which include variables, connections, and configurations—is crucial for maintaining the security and functionality of your Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs). Secrets can be stored using various methods, each with its own advantages and limitations. Environment variables are simple but lack encryption; the Airflow Metastore DB provides some security with Fernet key encryption but may not be suitable for production due to potential security concerns. Alternative secrets backends like HashiCorp Vault, GCP Secret Manager, AWS Secrets Manager, and Azure Key Vault offer secure and flexible options that extend beyond Airflow deployments, allowing for management, rotation, and auditing of secrets. Integrating with cloud-native solutions like GCP Workload Identity and AWS IAM Roles enhances security and ease of management by associating cloud service accounts with Kubernetes service accounts. Best practices suggest using Airflow for its core orchestration capabilities while leveraging more specialized systems for secrets management, ensuring sensitive information is handled securely and efficiently.