Secret Rotation Best Practices: Strengthening Security and Compliance

Read full article here: https://www.oasis.security/blog/secret-rotation-asis/?utm_source=nhimg

In modern cybersecurity, few practices are as undervalued yet as vital as secret rotation. Secrets—whether API keys, SSH credentials, tokens, or certificates—are the lifeblood of digital access. And just like passwords, they must be periodically refreshed to prevent unauthorized use and limit exposure.

Yet, despite being a foundational control in frameworks like NIST, ISO 27001, and SOC 2, secret rotation remains one of the most overlooked processes across IT and DevSecOps. The reason? Complexity, manual effort, and a false sense of security.

This article explores why secret rotation matters, the risks of neglecting it, and how automation is transforming this essential practice into a seamless, compliant, and resilient security control.

Why Secret Rotation Matters

1. Responding to Attacks and Exposure
   Secret rotation is your first line of defense when credentials are compromised. A strong example comes from Cloudflare’s response to the Okta breach, where the company immediately rotated all affected credentials—proactively closing the window of exploitation. Whether the breach affects your environment or a third-party supplier, rotating secrets minimizes the impact and prevents unauthorized persistence.
2. Meeting Compliance and Audit Demands
   Regulations and auditors increasingly demand proof that secret management practices are active, not just documented. Frameworks like NIS2, PCI DSS, and ISO 27001 require demonstrable controls for key rotation, privilege review, and access expiration. Implementing consistent rotation ensures your organization can demonstrate compliance and defend against audit findings.
3. Managing Organizational Changes
   Employee transitions—joiners, movers, and leavers—introduce a major identity risk. Even after deprovisioning, former employees may retain knowledge of hardcoded secrets or access to automation accounts. Simply disabling a user identity in your IAM or IGA platform doesn’t remove this risk. True lifecycle management requires revoking or rotating every secret tied to that user or service.
4. Maintaining Business Continuity
   Expired or outdated secrets can silently break automation, integrations, or production workloads. Regular rotation prevents operational failures and keeps business processes uninterrupted, while ensuring all credentials remain within compliance timelines.

Common Misconceptions About Secret Rotation

“We offboard employees, so they lose all access.”
Offboarding in IAM systems doesn’t cover non-human identities (NHIs)—service accounts, bots, and automation tokens often operate outside user identity governance. If secrets tied to these accounts aren’t rotated, ex-employees can still access critical systems, especially in cloud environments where NHIs are the perimeter.

“Monitoring tools will catch unauthorized access.”
While CSPM and ITDR tools detect anomalies, they don’t eliminate exposure. Rotation is the response action that neutralizes compromised secrets. Without it, alerts only reveal problems—they don’t solve them.

“Secrets are stored in a vault, so we’re safe.”
Vaults like HashiCorp Vault or AWS Secrets Manager help centralize management, but they don’t guarantee usage discipline. Secrets may still exist outside vaults—in code, scripts, or unmonitored repositories. Without rotation and discovery, hidden or shadow secrets remain a silent risk.

“Secret scanners catch everything.”
Detection tools find exposed secrets on GitHub or Slack, but they can’t cover every channel, such as private chats or local files. Regular rotation limits the damage even when exposure goes undetected.

Why Manual Rotation Fails — and Automation Wins

The traditional approach—manual secret audits and the “scream test” (disabling a secret to see who complains)—is risky and inefficient. It disrupts workflows, leads to oversight, and introduces downtime.

Automated secret rotation, on the other hand, provides:

• Consistency: Secrets are rotated on schedule across all environments.
• Auditability: Full logs and proof of compliance for regulators.
• Zero disruption: Services and integrations remain uninterrupted.
• Reduced exposure: Compromised secrets automatically expire.

With automation, secret rotation becomes a continuous control, not an emergency task.

Final Thoughts

Secret rotation is no longer optional—it’s an essential pillar of identity security, compliance, and operational resilience. The rise of non-human identities and machine-to-machine communication makes the risks of static credentials exponentially higher.

Organizations that integrate automated rotation, discovery, and policy enforcement will not only meet compliance expectations but also strengthen their overall security posture against credential-based attacks.

The question isn’t if you should rotate your secrets — it’s how fast you can make it automated, invisible, and continuous.