A credential is anything a subject uses to prove identity: a password, a private key and certificate, a token seed, an application programming interface (API) key or a biometric template. Credential management covers how credentials are issued, stored, used, rotated, recovered and revoked. Weak credential management is behind a large share of breaches, whether through reused passwords, secrets hard-coded in source code, or accounts that were never disabled. Treat every credential as having a lifecycle with an owner, an expiry or rotation schedule, and a documented way to revoke it quickly when something goes wrong.
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