Retrieve a Secret from Azure Key Vault using PowerShell

This Microsoft Azure PowerShell post will show how to retrieve a secret from Azure Key Vault using PowerShell.

Azure Key Vault is a security tool that allows us to store secrets, certificates and keys and access them programmatically from applications in a secure process.

Azure allows us to retrieve secrets from a Key Vault using PowerShell, Azure CLI, C#, Python and any programming language with access to the Azure SDK libraries.

In our case, we are using Azure PowerShell, and to get started, make sure you have Azure PowerShell installed (if not, use the code below). You also need permissions to access the Vault you are trying to access.

Retrieve Secret

The following code shows how to install the Azure AZ module, connect, and retrieve a secret. If you already have Az installed, you can skip the installation part.

# Install the Az module
Install-Module -Name Az -AllowClobber -Scope CurrentUser

# Import the Az module
Import-Module -Name Az

# Connect to your Azure account
Connect-AzAccount

# Retrieve the secret
$secretValue = (Get-AzKeyVaultSecret -VaultName 'YourVaultName' -Name 'YourSecretName').SecretValueText

# Print the secret value
Write-Output $secretValue