API keys | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

In the realm of cybersecurity, the stakes are sky-high, and at its core lies secrets management — the foundational pillar upon which your security infrastructure rests. We're all familiar with the routine: safeguarding those API keys, connection strings, and certificates is non-negotiable. However, let's dispense with the pleasantries; this isn't a simple 'set it and forget it' scenario. It's about guarding your secrets in an age where threats morph as swiftly as technology itself. Lets shed some light on common practices that could spell disaster as well as the tools and strategies to confidently navigate and overcome these challenges. In simple words this is a first step guide for mastering secrets management across diverse terrains.  Top 5 common secrets management mistakes Alright, let's dive into some common secrets management mistakes that can trip up even the savviest of teams: Hard coding secrets in code repositories:  A classic mistake, hard codin...

In today's rapidly evolving SaaS environment, the focus is on human users. This is one of the most compromised areas in SaaS security management and requires strict governance of user roles and permissions, monitoring of privileged users, their level of activity (dormant, active, hyperactive), their type (internal/ external), whether they are joiners, movers, or leavers, and more.  Not surprisingly, security efforts have mainly been human-centric. Configuration options include tools like MFA and SSO for human authentication. Role-based access control (RBAC) limits the level of access; password complexity guidelines block unauthorized humans from accessing the application. Yet, in the world of SaaS, there is no shortage of access granted to non-human actors, or in other words, 3rd party connected apps.  Service accounts, OAuth authorizations, and API keys are just a few of the non-human identities that require SaaS access. When viewed through the lens of the application, no...

2023 has seen its fair share of cyber attacks, however there's one attack vector that proves to be more prominent than others - non-human access. With  11 high-profile attacks in 13 months  and an ever-growing ungoverned attack surface, non-human identities are the new perimeter, and 2023 is only the beginning.  Why non-human access is a cybercriminal's paradise  People always look for the easiest way to get what they want, and this goes for cybercrime as well. Threat actors look for the path of least resistance, and it seems that in 2023 this path was non-user access credentials (API keys, tokens, service accounts and secrets).  " 50% of the active access tokens connecting Salesforce and third-party apps are unused. In GitHub and GCP the numbers reach 33%." These non-user access credentials are used to connect apps and resources to other cloud services. What makes them a true hacker's dream is that they have no security measures like user credentials do (M...