Effective GitOps secrets management is crucial for secure software deployments, addressing challenges through strategies like encrypted secrets and external secrets managers to mitigate risks. GitOps, which uses a system's desired configuration stored in Git for software deployment, relies on Git repositories as the single source of truth, posing security risks if sensitive information like API keys and passwords are inadequately managed. Tools like Bitnami's Sealed Secrets and Mozilla's SOPS provide methods to encrypt and manage secrets, though they can be complex to scale and require manual intervention. Alternatively, using external secrets management systems, such as ExternalSecrets and Kubernetes Secrets Store CSI Driver, allows for safer integration of secrets into Kubernetes clusters by storing only references in Git. Despite these solutions, handling secrets securely in GitOps remains challenging, necessitating thoughtful strategy and tools like Harness GitOps-as-a-Service, which provides enterprise controls to ensure secure and compliant deployments with minimal engineering overhead.