The identity and platform teams should own it jointly, because GCP-native storage stops being enough once workloads move into Kubernetes, another cloud, or SaaS integrations. In that situation, the control problem is cross-environment lifecycle management, not just vault selection.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
When secrets governance spans GCP and external systems, the real problem is no longer where a secret is stored, but who can issue it, rotate it, revoke it, and prove it was used for the right workload. Once Kubernetes, SaaS, and partner systems enter the picture, GCP-native controls stop covering the full lifecycle. That gap is exactly where secrets sprawl, orphaned tokens, and inconsistent ownership create exposure.
NHIMG research on the Guide to the Secret Sprawl Challenge shows why centralisation matters: 88% of security professionals are concerned about secrets sprawl, yet only 44% of organisations use a dedicated secrets management system. The operational issue is not vault preference alone, but fragmented accountability across platform, identity, and application teams. Security teams that treat this as a cloud-only control often miss secrets embedded in CI/CD, workload manifests, and external integrations.
Current guidance from the OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 also aligns with this view: non-human identities need explicit ownership because they outlive the platform that first created them. In practice, many security teams encounter leaked or stale secrets only after a cross-environment integration has already been abused, rather than through intentional lifecycle review.
How It Works in Practice
The most effective operating model is joint ownership with clear boundaries. Identity teams should define policy, lifecycle requirements, and assurance standards. Platform teams should implement the integrations, automation, and runtime controls in GCP, Kubernetes, and external systems. Application owners should declare where secrets are used, which workloads consume them, and what rotation windows are acceptable.
That division works best when the governance model is tied to workload identity rather than only to secret storage. The SPIFFE workload identity specification is useful here because it shifts the question from “where is the credential saved?” to “what workload is asking for access right now?” For cross-environment environments, this usually means short-lived credentials, policy-as-code, and automated revocation rather than static shared secrets.
In NHIMG’s Ultimate Guide to NHIs, lifecycle management is treated as a control plane concern, not a tooling preference. A practical implementation should include:
- one inventory for all secrets, including GCP, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and SaaS tokens
- ownership tags that identify the system owner, business owner, and rotation approver
- automated TTLs for ephemeral credentials, with revocation on deployment completion
- policy checks before issuance, not after exposure
- logging that links secret use to the workload identity that requested it
This becomes operationally meaningful when mapped to control frameworks such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, which emphasizes governance, asset visibility, and access control across environments. These controls tend to break down when legacy applications cannot support short-lived credentials because rotation and attribution become manual exceptions.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter secrets governance often increases delivery overhead, requiring organisations to balance stronger lifecycle control against developer friction and integration complexity. That tradeoff is real, especially when older workloads, vendor-managed SaaS, or third-party APIs cannot support modern identity flows.
Best practice is evolving rather than settled for hybrid estates. In GCP-only workloads, a central cloud team may own most controls. Once external systems enter the path, current guidance suggests joint governance with a single policy authority and distributed operational execution. A central platform team can standardise tooling, but identity teams should still own policy exceptions, risk acceptance, and revocation standards.
Edge cases include break-glass accounts, vendor credentials, and migration windows. These often justify temporary exceptions, but they should be time-bound and reviewable. The Top 10 NHI Issues research is a useful reminder that shared secrets, weak rotation, and poor ownership are recurring failure modes, not one-off mistakes. Where external systems only support long-lived API keys, security teams should isolate blast radius, constrain scopes, and require compensating monitoring until stronger identity patterns are available.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0 and NIST AI RMF set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-03 | Addresses secrets lifecycle gaps across non-human identities. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | GV.OV, PR.AC | Covers governance and access control for cross-environment secrets. |
| NIST AI RMF | Useful where workloads are agentic or automated and need controlled credential use. |
Treat secret issuance as a governed runtime decision with monitoring, accountability, and escalation paths.
