Samuel Edwards
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April 20, 2025
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I’ll never forget the Monday morning I realized my friend and coworker Chad had committed a live API key to our code repository. We’d both worked late into the night on a rushed integration project, and I guess exhaustion got the better of him. First thing the following week, my inbox was blowing up with security alerts. I opened our Git hosting platform, and there it was: a brand-new commit featuring a production key copied right into the source code for all to see.
If you’ve ever found yourself in a similar spot, you know the feeling—like discovering you’ve left your car unlocked with the keys on the seat. Why does this keep happening? It’s not always about ignorance. Lots of developers and automation teams find themselves under intense pressure to deliver. Perhaps a client demands that a prototype integrate with a third-party service ASAP, or your CI/CD pipeline has to be up and running yesterday.
Under these conditions, you might place convenience above everything else. And that’s how those valuable secrets end up in commit histories, logs, or even random help tickets. We’ve all been there, but I’m here to say: let’s break the habit.
You may be wondering: “What’s the big deal? We can just rotate the key.” True, rotation is definitely an option—but there’s more to it. When an API key or password is pushed to a public code repository, it can be discovered by automated scanning bots in a matter of minutes (if not sooner). Even if your project is private, current or former team members might stumble across your secrets or reuse them where they shouldn’t. A single leak can have major consequences:
Modern teams often rely on automation like Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or any number of continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. Those pipelines pull your code, run tests, deploy to staging, or even push changes right into production environments. As beneficial as automation can be, it also amplifies the risk:
I know it’s easy to vent frustration about someone else’s mistake—but the reality is that we’re all Chad once in a while. The key (no pun intended) is establishing habits, workflows, and frameworks that make it way harder to commit secrets in the first place.
One of the simplest first steps is to move secrets into environment variables and make sure they’re never stored directly in your codebase. Some frameworks even come with environment-specific files (like .env files) that can be loaded at runtime. Then, you add those files to your .gitignore so they’re never checked into source control. It won’t magically solve every issue, but it’s an excellent place to start.
If you’re serious about keeping your credentials locked down, there’s no substitute for a secrets management tool. Services like HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, or Google Cloud Secret Manager provide robust ways to store, rotate, and audit credentials.
They also integrate seamlessly with many automation platforms, meaning you can dynamically fetch secrets during build or deployment phases. This approach is more secure than manually placing keys in environment variables.
I won’t lie: out of all the suggestions, implementing scanning tools is probably the easiest to do right away. You can incorporate solutions like Gitleaks, truffleHog, or GitGuardian into your CI pipeline to automatically detect suspicious patterns like keys, tokens, or private certificates.
If the tool finds something that looks like a secret, it can block the pull request or at least flag it before merges. It’s that extra safety net for both brand-new commits and older code in your repository history.
Let’s say you do end up exposing a key—either in a private chat with a colleague or a repository commit. If that key has unlimited permissions, you’re in trouble. But if you follow the principle of least privilege, you keep each credential’s access tightly scoped.
That way, the potential damage is minimized. For example, if you’re spinning up a short-lived environment for test automation, generate a key that only grants the minimal level of access required. Worst case scenario, an attacker can’t break into your entire infrastructure.
Even the best of us slip occasionally. If you rotate your secrets on a routine schedule—weekly, monthly, or at least quarterly—you reduce the window of opportunity for a leak to be exploited. Automate that rotation process so it’s not reliant on manual tasks. For instance, if you’re using AWS, their Secrets Manager can handle scheduled rotations for database credentials or API keys. Once a new key is generated, the old one automatically becomes invalid.
I remember how we used to onboard new developers by sending them a barrage of Slack messages with various tokens like, “Here’s the QA database password—just don’t share it!” That’s obviously a recipe for disaster. Nowadays, we have a short but firm policy: use the official secrets manager or talk to the DevOps lead when in doubt about handling credentials.
If you’re in an automation consulting environment, make sure to pass these rules on to your clients as well. They might not even realize they’re playing fast and loose with secrets, and guidance can help them build robust processes from the get-go.
Yes, you might have a bulletproof production environment with no exposed secrets, but what about your local dev environment? If developers store secrets in random config files on their personal machines, those credentials might accidentally end up committed at some point. Provide guidelines on local usage, or supply ephemeral development keys that can’t cause major havoc if leaked. It’s an extra step, but it further reduces your overall risk.
If you’re helping clients optimize their pipelines, there’s a high chance they’ll need to integrate third-party services, internal APIs, or database credentials at various stages of deployment. Ensuring those credentials are properly managed is a hallmark of a well-designed automation strategy. Otherwise, you’ll spend your time putting out fires instead of improving processes.
