Secret sprawl
Credentials scattered across many places, repos, notes, chats, with no central record of where they all live.
Learn it through a story
- The Secret That Outlived the Fix (Cybersecurity for Juniors 3, Ch 4)
Related terms
- SCA Software composition analysis, checking third-party dependencies against known vulnerability databases.
- Scareware A scam that claims your device is infected, to frighten you into clicking.
- Secret scanning Automated tools that watch public code for exposed credentials.
- Secrets manager / vault A system that stores credentials centrally and issues them securely, often with short lifespans.
- Secure SDLC Building security checks into every stage of the software development lifecycle, not bolting them on at the end.
- Security champion A team member, not on the security team, trained to run lightweight security checks on their own team's work.