diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index cac0b388f..fd18a36ca 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -266,7 +266,7 @@ dev-templates: templates-generate
 
 .PHONY: dev-aws
 dev-aws: yq
-	@$(YQ) e ".data.credentials = \"${AWS_CREDENTIALS}\"" config/dev/awscredentials.yaml | $(KUBECTL) -n $(NAMESPACE) apply -f -
+	@$(YQ) e ".stringData.AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS = \"${AWS_CREDENTIALS}\"" config/dev/awscredentials.yaml | $(KUBECTL) -n $(NAMESPACE) apply -f -
 
 .PHONY: dev-apply
 dev-apply: kind-deploy registry-deploy dev-push dev-deploy dev-templates dev-aws
diff --git a/config/dev/awscredentials.yaml b/config/dev/awscredentials.yaml
index e4546e87c..f9d1da391 100644
--- a/config/dev/awscredentials.yaml
+++ b/config/dev/awscredentials.yaml
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 apiVersion: v1
-data:
-  credentials: Cg==
+stringData:
+  AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS: Cg==
 kind: Secret
 metadata:
   labels:
diff --git a/docs/aws/credentials.md b/docs/aws/credentials.md
index 7f11fdd8a..c9745bb58 100644
--- a/docs/aws/credentials.md
+++ b/docs/aws/credentials.md
@@ -24,5 +24,5 @@ export AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS=$(clusterawsadm bootstrap credentials encode-a
 4. Create the secret with AWS credentials in the `hmc-system` namespace:
 
 ```
-kubectl create secret generic aws-credentials -n hmc-system --from-literal credentials="$(echo $AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS | base64 -d)"
+kubectl create secret generic aws-credentials -n hmc-system --from-literal AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS="$AWS_B64ENCODED_CREDENTIALS"
 ```