Introducing IBYOK: Secure LLM Key Management for Modern Teams

We're excited to announce the launch of IBYOK, which stands for Bring Your Own Key. It's a secure, developer-friendly platform for managing your LLM API keys that we built because we experienced the problems firsthand.

The Problem We Kept Seeing

If you're building with LLMs, you know the struggle. API keys are scattered across environment files, shared in Slack messages, and copy-pasted between projects. Every team we talked to described some version of the same challenges.

Security vulnerabilities accumulate silently. Keys in environment files accidentally get committed to repositories. Even when immediately deleted, they persist in git history. Automated scanners find these keys within hours, and suddenly your OpenAI account is generating charges for services you never requested.

Audit trails don't exist. When something goes wrong, teams can't answer basic questions. Who accessed this key? When was it last rotated? Did anyone copy it somewhere they shouldn't have? The lack of visibility makes incident response slower and less effective.

Environment confusion creates expensive mistakes. A developer running integration tests with production keys burns through API credits meant for real users. This happens not because developers are careless, but because the tools make it easy to use the wrong credentials.

Team coordination becomes painful. Sharing keys securely across a team shouldn't require choosing between convenience and security. Yet most teams either compromise security by sharing through insecure channels or compromise productivity with cumbersome processes.

What We Built

IBYOK addresses these challenges through a centralized platform designed specifically for LLM API key management.

Encrypted storage protects credentials at rest. All keys are encrypted using AWS KMS with keys we don't have access to. Your actual API keys never exist in plain text within our systems. Even if our infrastructure were compromised, the encrypted keys would be useless without the corresponding KMS access.

Environment-aware retrieval prevents the most common mistakes. Configure different behaviors for development, staging, and production. Use mock keys in development by default, eliminating the possibility of accidentally burning through production credits. When you intentionally need production access, the system makes that an explicit choice rather than an easy mistake.

Programmatic access enables automation. Retrieve keys through our External API using secure access tokens. Your CI/CD pipelines can obtain the credentials they need without storing them in repository secrets or pipeline configurations. Rotation happens in IBYOK, not across dozens of places where keys might be embedded.

Comprehensive access logging provides visibility. Every key access is logged with context about who made the request, when, and from what environment. These logs enable audit compliance, incident investigation, and usage pattern analysis that weren't possible before.

How Teams Use IBYOK

The typical workflow integrates smoothly into existing development practices.

Getting started takes minutes. Sign up with your GitHub account to establish identity. There's nothing to install on your infrastructure; IBYOK is a managed service accessible through our dashboard and API.

Storing keys is straightforward. Add your provider API keys through the dashboard, specifying which provider each key is for. IBYOK encrypts and stores them, and you can optionally configure environment-specific behaviors at this point.

Access tokens enable secure retrieval. Generate tokens with appropriate scopes for your different use cases. A token for local development might have narrow permissions, while a token for production deployment might have broader access. Each token can have its own expiration and scope configuration.

Applications retrieve keys at runtime. Rather than embedding API keys in your application or environment files, your applications request the credentials they need from IBYOK when they need them. This keeps credentials out of your codebase and enables centralized rotation without deployment.

Environment Separation Done Right

The environment system reflects how modern development actually works.

Development mode defaults to mock keys. When your application runs in development, it receives mock credentials that look realistic but don't work with actual providers. This prevents accidental API charges during development and testing.

Staging mode can be configured based on your testing needs. Some teams keep staging mocked for automated tests. Others use live credentials for final pre-release validation. The choice is yours, configured once and applied consistently.

Production mode provides real credentials with full logging. Every access is tracked, enabling both security monitoring and usage analysis.

Per-key overrides handle exceptions elegantly. Testing a new provider integration? Enable live mode for just that provider's credential while keeping everything else mocked. Finish testing and the override reverts; the system returns to its safe defaults.

Built for the Realities of LLM Development

LLM development has unique characteristics that informed our design decisions.

Credentials are high-value targets. Unlike traditional API keys that might have rate limits or limited capabilities, LLM API keys often provide access to expensive compute resources. A compromised key can generate significant charges quickly. Our security model treats every credential as sensitive by default.

Multiple providers are common. Production applications often integrate with several LLM providers simultaneously. IBYOK handles this naturally, providing a unified interface regardless of which providers you use.

Costs accumulate invisibly. Unlike infrastructure that clearly scales with usage, LLM API costs can spike without obvious indicators. Our mock mode system specifically addresses this by making real API usage an intentional choice rather than an easy accident.

Teams need both speed and safety. Security measures that slow down development get bypassed. We designed IBYOK to make secure practices the path of least resistance. Default to mock mode in development, require no configuration for basic usage, and provide enough flexibility for complex scenarios without requiring it for simple ones.

What's Coming Next

We're building IBYOK based on real feedback from real teams. Our roadmap focuses on the capabilities teams tell us they need most.

Team workspaces will enable collaborative key management with appropriate access controls. Share credentials across teams without sharing access equally, and maintain visibility into how different team members use shared resources.

Key rotation reminders will provide proactive notifications when credentials are due for rotation. Rather than relying on calendar reminders or memory, the system will track rotation schedules and prompt action before credentials age.

Usage analytics will surface insights about credential usage patterns. Understand which credentials are used most frequently, identify unusual access patterns, and optimize your credential strategy based on actual usage data.

Additional provider integrations will expand beyond the major LLM providers. As new providers emerge and teams adopt them, IBYOK will provide consistent management across the expanding ecosystem.

Getting Started Today

IBYOK is available now with a free tier that handles common use cases. Sign up takes seconds using your GitHub account.

We'd genuinely appreciate your feedback. We built IBYOK to solve problems we experienced ourselves, but your use cases and workflows might surface issues we haven't considered. Let us know what works well and what could be improved.

Secure key management shouldn't be complicated. It shouldn't be expensive. And it shouldn't require choosing between security and developer experience. That's what we're building with IBYOK, and we're excited to have you try it.