An organization is deploying a serverless application that requires connectivity to a proprietary database. It is crucial to ensure that the database credentials are neither embedded in the application's codebase nor exposed in any configuration files. As the developer for this project, which approach should you employ to safely handle the credentials and facilitate their retrieval during runtime by the application?
Embed the database credentials into environment variables, leveraging them directly from the runtime environment.
Generate service-specific user keys to embed within the application's source and configuration files.
Adopt a secure service specifically designed for secret management to manage and retrieve database credentials dynamically.
Utilize a system manager for parameter configuration to store credentials and use them as simple system parameters.