Manage Azure Key Vault Certificates with Rust

Azure Key Vault Certificates SDK for Rust is a client library for secure storage and management of certificates in Azure Key Vault, via a CertificateClient authenticated with DeveloperToolsCredential from azure_identity.

It covers the full certificate lifecycle in six stages: create (generate a new certificate from a CertificatePolicy specifying an issuer, such as "Self" for self-signed, and X.509 properties like the subject name), import (bring in an existing base64-encoded PFX/PEM certificate, optionally password-protected), get (retrieve a certificate's public key and thumbprint), update (modify certificate properties), delete (soft delete, recoverable), and purge (permanent deletion). Certificates in the vault can be listed by paging through their properties via an async stream, and a certificate's policy - the rules governing renewal and key generation - can be read or updated independently of the certificate itself.

Use it when a Rust application needs to create, import, retrieve, or manage TLS/X.509 certificates centrally in Key Vault rather than storing certificate material in application code or the filesystem. Prefer managed certificates with a supported issuer for auto-renewal over manually recreating certificates before they expire, and enable soft delete on production vaults so a certificate deletion is always recoverable.

Input is a certificate name plus either a CertificatePolicy (for creation) or base64-encoded certificate data (for import). Output is the created/imported/retrieved certificate (with its thumbprint) or its policy, deserialized via into_model()?. Install it with:

cargo add azure_security_keyvault_certificates azure_identity

Its own best practices: use Entra ID auth (DeveloperToolsCredential in development), prefer managed certificates with auto-renewal over manual issuance, set a validity period that balances security against maintenance overhead, define renewal and key properties explicitly through certificate policies, monitor for expiring certificates with alerts, and enable soft delete on production vaults. RBAC access is controlled via the Key Vault Certificates Officer role for full CRUD or Key Vault Reader for read-only metadata access.

It's the azure_security_keyvault_certificates crate paired with azure_identity for Entra ID authentication against an Azure Key Vault instance, with certificate issuance optionally delegated to a supported external certificate authority or a self-signed issuer, and vault-level RBAC assigned through Azure's own role system rather than a custom permission model.

Rust developers and security engineers managing TLS/X.509 certificates centrally in Azure Key Vault - creation, import, renewal policy, and lifecycle (including soft-delete recovery) - rather than handling certificate files manually.