Take into account the lifecycle of a typical microservice. In its journey from a developer’s laptop computer to manufacturing, it would generate a dozen distinct identities: a GitHub token for the repository, a CI/CD service account for the construct, a registry credential to push the container, and a number of runtime roles to entry databases, queues and logging companies.
The issue isn’t just quantity; it’s invisibility. When a developer leaves, HR triggers an offboarding course of. Their electronic mail is reduce, their badge stops working. However what in regards to the 5 service accounts they hardcoded right into a deployment script three years in the past? These often keep lively, unmonitored, ready for somebody to seek out them. Typically, these “zombie identities” retain administrative privileges lengthy after their authentic objective has vanished, just because nobody is courageous sufficient to show them off.
The “take a look at tenant” entice
I’ve seen too many groups fall into the entice of pondering a take a look at atmosphere doesn’t matter. “It’s simply dev,” they are saying. “There’s no actual buyer information there.” This complacency is deadly as a result of id boundaries are not often as clear as we expect they’re.
