title: How do I store and access my third party API keys with AWS
body: <p>I have an existing ASP.NET/ C# website that I am looking to migrate to AWS. 
  I currently store all 3rd party API tokens/credentials in my web.config file in an encrypted section. </p>
  
  <p>The encryption is done via the normal aspnet_regiis command similar to this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>aspnet_regiis -pe "connectionStrings" -app "/SampleApplication" -prov "RsaProtectedConfigurationProvider"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>That all works very well. </p>
  
  <p>Moving to the AWS world I understand I could do the same thing using the web.config file but I wanted to know if there is a better, more appropriate way to do this.</p>
  
  <p>The AWS Key Management Service sounds like it is meant to solve this problem but from what I can ascertain it is really just for storing your AWS master keys.</p>
  
  <p>I've seen that people have used the master keys to encrypt a text file that is uploaded to the AWS web server and then using the master keys to decrypt the file when it is required. That file could contain a list of third party keys and so would be one way to solve the problem.</p>
  
  <p>What I am trying to understand, but failing to is, is that the correct way to do it (i.e. storing the 3rd party keys in a text/json/xml file and encrypting with the AWS master key and storing on the server and querying as and when necessary) or is there a way in AWS to enter each of my 3rd party keys into somewhere/something that the web application can query directly?</p>