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API keys are security mechanisms used to authenticate and authorize access to your deployments and {{es}} resources.
They ensure that only authorized users or applications interact with these resources through Elastic APIs.
For example, if you extract data from an {{es}} cluster on a daily basis, you might create an API key tied to your credentials, configure it with minimum access, and then put the API credentials into a cron job. Or you might create API keys to automate ingestion of new data from remote sources, without a live user interaction.
Depending on the APIs you want to use, the API keys to create are different, and managed at different locations:
- , to use {{es}} and {{kib}} APIs, and to manage remote cluster connections.
- , to use {{es}} and {{kib}} serverless APIs.
- , to manage your {{ecloud}} organization, {{ech}} deployments, and serverless projects using the {{ecloud}} and {{ecloud}} serverless APIs.
- , to manage your {{ece}} platform and deployments using the {{ece}} API.