Rails 5.2 is looking like it will replace encrypted secrets with encrypted credentials - see PR here: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/30067 Rails 5.1 was released with an encrypted secrets feature: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/25095 + PR: https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/28038 Recommend this in the checklist and possibly its alternatives for earlier Rails versions (e.g. sekrets gems mentioned in https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/25095)