The HashiCorp Vault system is designed to protect sensitive data from well-resourced, skilled adversaries, including those who have infiltrated an organization's perimeter security. This is crucial in the face of rising insider threats and supply chain attacks. The system uses a cryptographic barrier to encrypt data at rest, which is protected by industry-vetted cryptography and provides options for users to secure their infrastructure according to their threat model. Vault also implements key management features such as manual unsealing using Shamir's Key Sharing Algorithm or utilizing a trusted external system like an HSM or cloud KMS. The system minimizes the possibility of privilege escalation or key exfiltration attacks by keeping users and operators separate from keys used to protect secrets. Additionally, Vault has features like multilevel security, role-based access control, and attribute-based access control, as well as extensive audit logging, dynamic credentials, and trust independent of the network. The system is designed with the zero-trust principle in mind, requiring explicit client authentication/authorization and short-lived, ephemeral credentials to make lateral movement and persistent access more challenging. The ciphers used in Vault have been shown to resist cryptanalysis against well-resourced adversaries, including those armed with supercomputers and near-term quantum computers. The development team of HashiCorp also follows safe coding practices, internal security checks, external audit and compliance, and a community-driven approach to secure the system.