The Vault Facility enables Enterprise Server components to store sensitive data, such as passwords, in one or more vaults.
A vault is some form of storage that provides more protection than typical file storage. A vault might be implemented using encryption, an operating system feature, a network service, specialized hardware, or some other mechanism.
A vault provider is the software module used by the Vault Facility to interact with a particular kind of vault. The mfsecretsaes vault provider included with Enterprise Server supports Windows platforms. See The mfsecretsaes Vault Provider for details.