Who is accountable for deciding how access tokens are requested and refreshed across heterogeneous API providers?

Why This Matters for Security Teams

Who decides token request and refresh behavior is not a minor implementation detail. It determines whether every API call is made under a consistent trust model or whether each provider gets a different ad hoc interpretation of audience, scope, expiry, and refresh. That governance belongs with identity and platform teams because they define the token contract that application teams consume. In practice, this is where many breaches begin: inconsistent token handling creates durable access paths that are hard to see and harder to revoke, a pattern reflected in NHIMG research on the Salesloft OAuth token breach and the Guide to the Secret Sprawl Challenge. The OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 frames this as a lifecycle and governance problem, not just an authentication problem. In practice, many security teams encounter token drift only after a provider integration has already exposed data or bypassed expected controls.

How It Works in Practice

The accountable teams should define a shared token contract that covers what a client may request, how long the token lives, when refresh is allowed, and whether token exchange is required for downstream calls. That contract should be enforced centrally so application developers do not improvise per provider. At a minimum, it should specify:

• the approved audience values for each API provider or resource server
• the minimum scope set for each workflow, with no wildcard shortcuts
• refresh token handling, including storage, rotation, and revocation rules
• token exchange rules when a front-end token must not be reused for backend calls
• library or gateway enforcement so policy is applied consistently at runtime

This is aligned with NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 expectations for least privilege and access enforcement, and with the operational lessons in the JetBrains GitHub plugin token exposure, where exposed credentials turned a routine integration into a security event. For heterogeneous providers, current guidance suggests treating the platform layer as the source of truth and using provider-specific adapters only where the contract allows variation. If a provider cannot support the contract cleanly, it should be isolated rather than allowed to redefine token behavior locally. These controls tend to break down when legacy APIs, long-lived refresh tokens, and manually coded client logic are mixed in the same environment because revocation and audience controls stop being enforceable end to end.

Common Variations and Edge Cases

Tighter token governance often increases integration overhead, requiring organisations to balance developer velocity against consistent control. Not every API provider supports the same OAuth flow, token exchange pattern, or refresh semantics, and there is no universal standard for this yet. In those cases, the identity and platform teams should decide whether the provider gets an exception, a brokered token path, or no integration at all. That decision should be explicit, documented, and reviewed as part of architecture governance rather than left to individual squads. The most common edge case is machine-to-machine automation that needs short-lived access but also needs uninterrupted runtime. Best practice is evolving toward ephemeral credentials, scoped service identities, and automated refresh through trusted middleware rather than embedding refresh logic in each application. Another important exception is delegated access across multiple tenants or vendors, where the audience claim may need translation but the original end-user identity still must not become a reusable bearer token everywhere. NHIMG’s Ultimate Guide to NHIs is useful context for why these identities need dedicated lifecycle governance, and the Internet Archive breach shows how quickly one weak token-handling assumption can expand into broader exposure. In short, heterogeneous APIs do not remove the need for a single owner; they make that ownership more important.

Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group

• Who should be accountable for access governance when enterprise API tools use SCIM, domain capture, and domain lock together?
• What is the difference between role-based access and API key governance for NHI security?
• How should security teams govern API keys used for generative AI access?
• Who is accountable for CRA compliance across the product supply chain?