What if engineers need broad access for break-glass incidents?

Allow it—but make it time‑boxed and provable. Implement a break‑glass role with strong MFA, session TTL ≤ 15 minutes, and mandatory Jira reference. Log the assumption event and create an attestation artifact that expires the access automatically.

Do we need Vault if we’re all-in on AWS?

Not necessarily. AWS Secrets Manager + IAM roles + External Secrets Operator covers most cases. Vault shines for dynamic database creds, complex rotation workflows, and multi-cloud. Pick one, standardize, and forbid ad-hoc secrets elsewhere.

Won’t admission policies break production?

Not if you stage them. Start with `audit`/`dry-run`, then `warn`, then `enforce` for scoped namespaces. Pair with progressive delivery so you can quickly rollback if a policy bites an edge case.

How do we handle legacy apps that can’t rotate creds?

Wrap them. Use a sidecar or init container that fetches/refreshes creds and updates the app via file/ENV. Set shorter TTLs and automate restarts on rotation. Plan a modernization path, but don’t wait for it to enforce rotation at the platform layer.

What about GCP/Azure equivalents?

Same patterns. Use Workload Identity Federation for CI, Cloud KMS/Secret Manager for secrets, Binary Authorization + Artifact Registry + COSIGN for images, and Policy Controller (OPA/Gatekeeper) or Azure Policy/Defender for admission and compliance.

Security-compliance · Oct 3, 2025 · 9 minute read

Stop Hand‑Waving Compliance: Codify Least‑Privilege, Secrets, and Dependency Risk or Eat the Pager

Policies don’t matter until they’re enforced in CI, proven with artifacts, and boring to audit. Here’s how to turn least‑privilege, rotation, and supply‑chain controls into code without grinding delivery to a halt.

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Stop Hand‑Waving Compliance: Codify Least‑Privilege, Secrets, and Dependency Risk or Eat the Pager

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist