Developers' Secrets, But Security Team's Challenge

The lack of the security team's involvement in the creation and the permissioning of developers' secrets poses a significant challenge when it comes to safeguarding the organization, warned Steve Johnson, vice president of sales at Entro Security.

See Also: Introduction to Elastic Security: Modernizing security operations

Why do adversaries find exploiting these secrets so attractive? "It's appealing because it's not involving a user, it can be just literally a string of characters in its most basic form," Johnson said. "So when you gain access to those, as a malicious outsider, you have a lot of access inside of the organization to critical databases that contain sensitive information."

Organizations need to implement secret management best practices and the first step is the use of vaults and managing the many vaults created throughout the enterprise, Johnson said. Entro helps customers ensure adherence to security processes, gain oversight into all areas where secrets are shared, and effectively reduce the attack surface area.

In this video interview with Information Security Media Group at ISMG's Financial Services Summit 2023, Johnson also discussed:

• Hurdles organizations face when trying to gain visibility into developers' secrets;
• How Entro addresses issues related to vault use in organizations;
• Overcoming challenges associated with securing developers' secrets.

As a former security engineer, channel manager, and head of emerging products, Johnson has a unique combination of technical, business and leadership skills and is responsible for driving sales and security excellence at Entro Security. He has more than 20 years of experience in the computer and network security industry.