Glossary

Secrets expiration is a security measure that ensures sensitive credentials—such as API keys, database passwords, and encryption keys—automatically rotate or deactivate after a set period. This practice minimizes the risk of unauthorized access, reduces exposure in case of leaks, and enforces a proactive security posture.

Without expiration policies, secrets can remain active indefinitely, increasing the likelihood of misuse if they are exposed. Attackers often exploit long-lived credentials found in code repositories, logs, or public leaks. By enforcing expiration, organizations limit the window of opportunity for potential breaches, even if a secret is compromised.

Secrets expiration is particularly valuable in dynamic environments like cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and microservices architectures, where frequent updates and deployments make manual secret management impractical. Automated expiration ensures credentials are regularly refreshed without relying on developers to remember rotations.

Best practices include setting expiration intervals based on sensitivity, using automated workflows to replace expiring secrets, and integrating secrets management solutions to handle rotations seamlessly. Many organizations combine expiration policies with just-in-time (JIT) access and ephemeral credentials, further reducing long-term exposure.