New Terraform Tutorial: Sensitive Input Variables
A new tutorial on HashiCorp Learn shows how to protect sensitive data with Terraform.
HashiCorp Terraform configuration often includes sensitive inputs, such as passwords, API tokens, or Personally Identifiable Information (PII). Terraform provides several features to help avoid accidentally exposing sensitive data.
Learn to Protect Sensitive Inputs
Follow our new tutorial on HashiCorp Learn, Protect Sensitive Input Variables. In this tutorial, you will provision a web application using Terraform, and use the `sensitive` variable flag to set sensitive values. You will also learn about ways to manage sensitive values in your Terraform state.
Use the “sensitive” Flag
New in Terraform 0.14, input variables now support the `sensitive` flag. Terraform will redact the values of sensitive variables in console and log output, to reduce the risk of accidentally disclosing these values.
When you apply this configuration, Terraform redacts the sensitive value from its console output.
This feature helps prevent accidental disclosure of sensitive values, but is not sufficient to fully secure your Terraform configuration.
Secure Terraform State
Even when a variable is marked sensitive, Terraform still needs to store the value in its state file, so that it can correctly apply configuration changes.
In this tutorial, you will learn about several methods that Terraform and other HashiCorp products provide to secure your state file.
Sign up for the latest HashiCorp news
More blog posts like this one
Build secure, AI-driven workflows with Terraform and Vault MCP servers
At AWS Summit New York, HashiCorp introduced new capabilities that bring Terraform, Vault, and Vault Radar into the age of AI agents — advancing secure, automated infrastructure through composable, agentic systems.
Terraform without writing code: How to build self-service with no-code modules
Terraform no-code modules are an advanced infrastructure as code best practice that helps everyone in the org use standard, approved modules, even if you don’t know Terraform.
Helvetia’s journey building an enterprise serverless product with Terraform
What started as a basic compliance challenge for one team at Helvetia Insurance evolved into a comprehensive enterprise solution for running self-managed installations like a cloud service, using Terraform to manage a serverless architecture.