# Secret providers

Plakar Control Plane handles sensitive credentials like tokens, passwords, and more. When configuring a connector, inventory, or any other resource that requires a credential, Plakar Control Plane gives you two options.

- **Direct value:** stores the credential directly in the Plakar Control Plane database. This is the simplest option and works well for most setups.
- **Secret provider:** delegates the credential resolution to an external secret manager. Instead of storing the value itself, Plakar Control Plane stores a path that points to the secret in your secret manager, and resolves it at runtime.

Using a secret provider is recommended if your organization already manages credentials centrally, or if you want to avoid storing sensitive values in the database.

## Setting up a secret provider

Before you can use a secret provider, you need to configure one. See the provider-specific instructions for your secret manager:

- [AWS Secrets Manager](/content/control-plane-docs/infrastructure/secret-providers/index.html)
- [HashiCorp Vault](/content/control-plane-docs/infrastructure/secret-providers/vault-sm/index.html)
- [Scaleway Secret Manager](/content/control-plane-docs/infrastructure/secret-providers/index.html)
- [GCP Secret Manager](/content/control-plane-docs/infrastructure/secret-providers/index.html)