33. Secure Storage and Key Management

Keep encryption keys separate from data and manage secrets with environment variables or vaults.

Example

from cryptography.fernet import Fernet
import os

key = os.getenv("APP_KEY") or Fernet.generate_key()
f = Fernet(key)
token = f.encrypt(b"Confidential message")
print("Encrypted:", token)
print("Decrypted:", f.decrypt(token))

✅ Lesson: Use a managed secret (Vault, AWS KMS, env vars) — never hardcode encryption keys.