On DevOps — 31. A Comprehensive Guide to SOPS: Managing Your Secrets Like A Visionary, Not a Functionary

1. Introduction to SOPS

1.1 What is SOPS?

First, let’s cut to the chase and get straight to the elephant in the room: what’s SOPS?

SOPS, short for Secrets OPeration S, is an open-source text file editor that encrypts/decrypts files automagically.

Emphasis on the text editor, encryption, and automation.

Typically, when you want to encrypt a text file, this is what you do:

1. Use your favorite editor for writing, editing, and manipulating the text data, and save it as a file.
2. Use an encryption/decryption tool to encrypt the whole file.

When you need to read the encrypted file:

1. First, you need to decrypt the file with an encryption/decryption tool.
2. Open the decrypted file (now it’s a regular text file) with a text editor of your choice.

The drawback of this “normal” process is obvious: you need two tools (an editor and an encryption/decryption tool) for one job.

Enter SOPS.