Network Management
Credentials are securely encrypted in SolarWinds Platform products
This article provides information on how are credentials stored in the SolarWinds database.
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Overview
This article describes how credentials are securely encrypted and stored within the SolarWinds Platform, addressing the common questions:
- Are credentials stored in plain text, or are they encrypted or hashed?
- Where are the database credentials stored when configuring the additional polling engine (APE) to communicate with SQL?
- How are these credentials secured?
- Does APE locally store these Database credentials and how these credentials are secured?
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Cause
Resolution
The SolarWinds Platform database-stored credentials are encrypted/decrypted via PKI (see the details of the SolarWinds-Orion certificate). This certificate is shared among the primary poller and all scalability engines. SolarWinds Platform accounts use a salted hash (SHA512), where each account has its own hash. The algorithms are FIPS compliant.
As for local storage, the APE does not store database credentials locally in plain text. Credentials added on the API poller page are sent by HTTP in plain text, so it is recommended to add credentials by logging into the SolarWinds Platform server directly or using the Manage Credentials page to ensure secure handling.
SNMPv2 Community strings are stored in plain text; all others are encrypted as above.