Create Vault policies

Policies provide a declarative way to grant or forbid access to certain paths and operations in Vault. In this step, you will create a policy and then edit it to support new requirements.

Create a policy

1. Select Policies from the menu

   

   This view is the policy index and displays all the policies. The default policy and the root policy were created when Vault was initialized.

2. Select the Create ACL policy action.

   

   Select the example template link will bring up a dialog box with example.

   

   Click the Close button to return.

3. Enter webapp in the Name field.

4. Enter this policy in the Policy field.

   # Read the configuration secret example
   path "secret/config" {
       capabilities = ["read"]
   }
   
   # List secrets engines
   path "sys/mounts" {
       capabilities = ["read"]
   }
   

5. Choose the Create policy action at the bottom of the view.

   

   The policy is created and this view displays its name and contents.

6. Select the ACL Policies navigation from within the view.

   

   The view returns to the policy index. The new webapp policy is displayed.

   Filtering

   When there are a lot of policies, the Filter policies field can narrow the displayed policies down to a manageable list or the exact policy.

Edit a policy

The webapp policy needs to be updated to support a new secrets engine and its paths required and capabilities.

1. Select the webapp policy title from within the policy index view.

   This view displays the policy with its definition. The read-only policy field displays the entire contents of the policy.

2. Select the Edit policy action from within the view.

   

   This view is the policy edit view. The Policy field provides a text editor preloaded with the policy definition.

3. Select the Policy text editor from within the view.

   The editor enables navigation through the arrow keys.

4. Add this policy to after the other content in the Policy field.

   # Enable Transit secrets engine
   path "sys/mounts/transit" {
       capabilities = ["create", "update"]
   }
   
   # Manage Transit secrets engine keys
   path "transit/keys" {
       capabilities = ["list"]
   }
   path "transit/keys/*" {
       capabilities = ["create", "list", "read", "update"]
   }
   path "transit/keys/+/config" {
       capabilities = ["create", "update"]
   }
   
   # Encrypt with any Transit secrets engine key
   path "transit/encrypt/*" {
       capabilities = ["create", "update"]
   }
   
   # Decrypt with any Transit secrets engine key
   path "transit/decrypt/*" {
       capabilities = ["create", "update"]
   }
   

   Editing

   The editor supports common keyboard shortcuts for undo and redo. You can also reset every change back its original by choosing Cancel.

   The updated policy needs to be saved.

5. Choose the Save action at the bottom of the view.

   

   The policy is updated. The view returns to the policy and its updated definition.

Next steps

You created a policy in Vault. Policies are attached to tokens that Vault generates through its various authentication methods. Learn how to manage authentication methods with Vault UI.

You created a policy from a file. Policy authoring requires the understanding of paths which map to the Vault API endpoints, and the available actions for each path. Learn more about policies.