How to use the AWS Workload Credentials Provider for cross-account secret retrieval and prefetching secrets

This article explains how to use two new features of the AWS Workload Credentials Provider: role chaining for cross-account secret retrieval and prefetching to reduce cold-start latency.

• Role chaining allows a single provider instance to access secrets across AWS accounts by assuming IAM roles
• Prefetching populates the provider's in-memory cache at startup, eliminating first-request network latency
• Configure explicit secrets or use tag-based discovery to prefetch secrets from source and target accounts
• Requires IAM permissions for sts:AssumeRole, secretsmanager:GetSecretValue, and secretsmanager:DescribeSecret
• Provider supports EC2, ECS, EKS, and Lambda with post-quantum TLS and SSRF token security

These features simplify multi-account architectures and improve performance for latency-sensitive applications retrieving secrets across AWS accounts.