As a configuration management system or an orchestration engine, Ansible has great power. In order to wield that power, it is necessary to entrust secret data to Ansible. An automated system that prompts the operator for passwords all the time is not very efficient. To maximize the power of Ansible, secret data has to be written to a file that Ansible can read and utilize the data from within.

This creates a risk though! Your secrets are sitting there on your filesystem in plain text. This is a physical and digital risk. Physically, the computer could be taken from you and pawed through for secret data. Digitally, any malicious software that can break the boundaries set upon it could read any data your user account has access to. If you utilize a source control system, the infrastructure that houses the repository is just as much at risk.

Thankfully, Ansible provides a facility to protect your data at rest. That facility is Vault, which allows for encrypting text files...