Who should own the cleanup of hackathon-created credentials and apps?

Why This Matters for Security Teams

Hackathon credentials are usually created to move fast, not to live long. That is exactly why cleanup ownership matters: if the app team does not own teardown, no one is responsible for revoking tokens, removing cloud roles, deleting service principals, or closing the side paths those tools opened. Current guidance from OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 treats unmanaged NHI lifecycle as a core risk, not an administrative detail.

This is also where secret sprawl starts. Temporary app credentials often get copied into chat, CI variables, test data, and shared notes, then forgotten after the event. NHI Management Group has documented how secret sprawl becomes a recurring weakness in Guide to the Secret Sprawl Challenge, especially when there is no clear owner to drive revocation. In practice, many security teams encounter the breach after the demo is over, when a forgotten token is still valid and still connected to production-adjacent systems.

How It Works in Practice

The safest pattern is simple: the creating team owns cleanup, while platform and security teams enforce checkpoints. That means the team that built the hackathon app must remove the app registration, delete keys and certificates, revoke API tokens, disable cloud roles, and confirm that any data stores, webhooks, or service accounts are also retired. Security should require a dated teardown plan before the event begins, and platform teams should make access expiration part of the provisioning path.

For better control, use short-lived access rather than standing secrets. NHI Management Group’s Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Static vs Dynamic Secrets explains why dynamic credentials are easier to retire than long-lived ones. That aligns with NIST SP 800-63 Digital Identity Guidelines, which emphasise proof and lifecycle controls, not just initial issuance. A practical cleanup workflow usually includes:

• named owner for every hackathon NHI or app registration
• expiry date tied to the event end time
• one teardown checklist for app, secrets, data, and integrations
• post-event verification that no active credentials remain

That process should also include Git history and build artifacts, because hackathon teams often paste secrets into repos, workflows, or sample configs. The risk is not only the app itself; it is everything the app touched. These controls tend to break down when multiple teams share the same test tenant or reuse one service account across several demos because deletion then creates collateral outages and ownership disputes.

Common Variations and Edge Cases

Tighter cleanup control often increases friction, requiring organisations to balance hackathon speed against real lifecycle discipline. There is no universal standard for every event model yet, but best practice is evolving toward event-scoped identities, JIT access, and forced expiration. If a team argues that “someone else will clean it up,” that is already a control failure.

Some environments need exceptions. Internal hackathons in isolated sandboxes can tolerate broader access than customer-facing prototypes, but only if the isolation is real and the teardown is automatic. Shared cloud tenants, federated CI/CD systems, and multi-project demos are the hardest cases because one forgotten credential can reach many apps. For that reason, the cleanup owner should be the creator, while security verifies revocation against policy and platform enforces it technically. See also Reviewdog GitHub Action supply chain attack and CI/CD pipeline exploitation case study for how fast demo-era access becomes persistent risk. In short, the owner should be the team that benefited from the shortcut, because only that team knows what was created and where it was connected.

Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group

• When do NHI access reviews create more value than a one-time cleanup?
• How do organisations reduce the dwell time of exposed credentials at scale?
• How should organisations stop auto-sync from turning desktops into repositories of credentials?
• Who should own third-party access risk in a banking GRC programme?