Secrets are blobs of data, such as a password, which you do not want transmitted over a network or stored unencrypted.
Secrets secure data during transmission via a verification process, where only containers that know the secret receive the data. Secrets effectively manage the data and which containers have access to it.
You typically store data in a secret if it contains sensitive data. For example, a secret may be storing usernames and passwords. However, you can also choose to store non-sensitive data in secrets.
You can use secrets as a layer of abstraction for the container and credentials. For example, your application may have separate environments, each with their own set of credentials. However, if you have all those credentials in a set under the same secret, then you can use that secret in all of the app’s environments.