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Freedom251 › Blog › AWS

How to Find and Inventory Secrets Across Cloud Accounts, Repositories, and CI/CD

By Freedom251 Team · · 11 min read

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A useful secrets inventory is a map of credentials, where they live, what can use them, and who is responsible—not a report full of secret values. To find them across cloud accounts, repositories, and CI/CD, define the systems in scope, collect metadata from each surface, connect credentials to their consumers and permissions, and prioritize exposed or high-impact credentials for rotation or revocation.

A vault-only list is incomplete: credentials can also appear in Git history, pipeline variables, runner configuration, deployment templates, runtime settings, logs, and supporting infrastructure. The method below covers GitHub, AWS, and Azure with the documented boundaries of each. For Google Cloud, verify the current official organization/project discovery method and IAM requirements rather than assuming an AWS or Azure command applies.

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What a secrets inventory should contain

Inventory credentials across application code, CI/CD pipelines, runtime environments, and supporting infrastructure. Microsoft’s Safe Secrets Standard explicitly calls for credentials to be inventoried across those surfaces. The goal is to identify and manage credentials without unnecessarily copying their values into reports, tickets, spreadsheets, or artifacts.

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For each finding, capture the details needed to locate, assess, assign, and remediate it. A practical record includes:

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  • Credential identity: a safe identifier, type, and provider or issuing system. Do not store the credential value in the inventory.
  • Location: organization, cloud account or subscription, repository and branch or history context, vault, pipeline, runtime, or supporting system, as applicable.
  • Ownership: a responsible team or service owner and a remediation contact.
  • Access context: privilege, scope, environments reachable, and the identities or systems authorized to retrieve or use it.
  • Lifecycle context: age or relevant creation metadata when available, expiry information, rotation or revocation state, and the date of the last verification.
  • Consumption context: applications, pipelines, deployment environments, and services that depend on the credential.
  • Exposure and response: where it was found, whether it may have been exposed, the triage priority, and remediation status.

Not every source exposes every attribute. Record what the source actually provides, then use owner and consumer follow-up to fill operational gaps. Keep the inventory itself access-controlled: metadata can still reveal valuable information about infrastructure and access paths.

Define the scope before scanning

“All secrets” is only meaningful when “all” has a boundary. Write down the organizations, cloud accounts or subscriptions, repositories, pipeline systems, runtime environments, and supporting infrastructure that the inventory is intended to cover. Include the teams or owners responsible for each area, and identify systems that are excluded or not yet verified.

Build a scope register before collecting findings. It should let a reviewer distinguish an empty result from an area that was never scanned or could not be accessed.

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  • For source control, record organizations, repository ownership and visibility, and whether the scan covers current content, Git history, or both.
  • For cloud platforms, record the accounts or subscriptions and vaults in scope, along with the identity and permissions used to list metadata.
  • For CI/CD, record pipeline systems, projects, service connections or identities, runner configurations, and deployment environments.
  • For runtime and supporting infrastructure, identify the relevant configuration surfaces and who can verify whether a credential is present and in use.
  • Track the scan date, method, access failures, and material exclusions for each area.

This scope register is essential when interpreting a “no findings” result: it shows whether the result means a covered surface produced no matching detections, or whether that surface was outside the scan or inaccessible.

Find credentials in repositories and Git history

Repository scanning can detect credentials committed to source code, including historical commits when the scanning product covers Git history. GitHub says its secret scanning examines the entire Git history on all branches for hardcoded credentials such as API keys, passwords, and tokens, and creates repository alerts for detected leaks. Its public repositories receive scanning automatically. Organization-owned private and internal repositories require GitHub Secret Protection on GitHub Team or GitHub Enterprise Cloud. Enterprise public monitoring can also look for secrets associated with enterprise members in public repositories. Verify current plan entitlements and repository ownership before treating these areas as covered; availability can change. See GitHub’s secret scanning overview.

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Check the actual detection boundary

A scanner result describes only the patterns and surfaces it checks. GitHub’s pattern-pair detection, for example, requires the credential ID and secret to be in the same file and both to be pushed. If the components are split across files or repositories, that detection does not trigger an alert. Public monitoring also has its own scope. These limits mean a clean result is not proof that no credential exists anywhere in an organization, repository, build system, or runtime. The documented limits are described in GitHub’s secret scanning scope reference.

Turn alerts into inventory records

For each alert, record the repository and relevant location or history context, credential type or safe identifier when available, detection date, owner, likely consumers, and response state. Keep the value out of the record. If the alert points to a credential in a commit, treat it as exposed: GitHub recommends rotating it immediately. Deleting a commit or rewriting history may take time and does not replace revocation or rotation. Once the credential has been contained, assess whether history cleanup is necessary for the incident and repository context.

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Inventory credentials in cloud secret stores

Cloud vaults are a major inventory source, but the list of vaults and the list of secrets inside them are separate discovery tasks. First establish which accounts or subscriptions and vaults are in scope. Then collect secret identifiers and available attributes from each vault, using an identity with the required listing permissions. Do not retrieve values merely to build an inventory.

AWS Secrets Manager

AWS recommends managed storage, limiting access, monitoring, and rotation. Secrets Manager encrypts stored secrets at rest using AWS KMS and sends retrieved secrets over TLS. These safeguards describe the managed service; they do not by themselves prove that every account, repository, pipeline, or runtime has been inventoried. AWS also documents a CodeGuru Reviewer secrets detector for hardcoded passwords, database connection strings, usernames, and similar material. Treat code detection as a complement to vault discovery, not as an organization-wide inventory procedure. See AWS Secrets Manager best practices.

For applications that retrieve secrets across AWS accounts, AWS’s Workload Credentials Provider supports IAM role chaining with STS AssumeRole. Its documentation describes tag-based discovery when prefetching secrets and calls for secretsmanager:ListSecrets for that discovery, along with relevant secret retrieval permissions and role trust. This is a retrieval and prefetch capability; it is not a substitute for an organization-wide process that establishes inventory scope, ownership, consumers, and remediation responsibility. See the provider documentation and provider repository.

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Azure Key Vault

In Azure, first establish the Key Vault population in the subscriptions and resource groups that are in scope, then list secrets in each vault. The Azure CLI command az keyvault secret list returns base identifiers and attributes; it does not list individual versions or return secret values. The operation requires secrets/list. Use the version-list operation only if version metadata is part of the inventory question. Consult the Azure CLI Key Vault reference for the current command behavior.

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Do not confuse an identifier or attribute listing with proof that a secret is unused, valid, or safe. The listing provides metadata, not the value or a complete account of every consumer. Record the vault and secret identifier, available attributes, responsible owner, and any discovered pipeline or runtime relationships. If a field needed for lifecycle or usage decisions is not exposed in the listing, seek it from the owner or the system that consumes the secret.

Google Cloud requires a separately verified procedure

The documented method here does not establish a cross-project Google Cloud Secret Manager inventory procedure. Before including Google Cloud in a production inventory, verify the current official organization and project scope, the supported list method, and the IAM permissions required. Do not reuse AWS or Azure commands as if they were universal. Until that provider-specific process is verified, mark the relevant scope as unverified rather than reporting the organization as fully covered.

Map CI/CD identities, variables, and vault access

Vault inventories miss credentials stored directly in repository settings, pipeline variables, runner configuration, deployment templates, logs, or build outputs. They can also miss an important part of the exposure: which pipeline identity can read which vault, and which environments that pipeline can deploy to. Microsoft’s standard includes CI/CD and supporting infrastructure alongside code and runtime for this reason.

Build the pipeline-to-access map

  1. List the pipeline systems and projects in scope. Tie each project to its repositories, runners or agents, and deployment environments.
  2. Identify pipeline identities and connections. Record the service principal, managed identity, service connection, or other identity the pipeline uses, and the cloud accounts or vaults it can access.
  3. Record secret sources and consumers. Connect pipeline variables and vault references to the jobs, scripts, templates, and deployment targets that use them. Store names and access relationships, not values.
  4. Check output paths. Review whether scripts, logs, files, or build artifacts could contain retrieved credentials. Avoid publishing secret-bearing files or allowing values to flow into persistent outputs.
  5. Assign ownership. Link the pipeline and its credentials to an accountable team, with a route for updating consumers after rotation.

Azure Pipelines and Key Vault

Azure Pipelines can retrieve named secrets or all secrets from an Azure Key Vault task. The service principal or managed identity used by the pipeline must have Get and List permissions. This integration helps map pipeline-to-vault relationships, but it also creates a handling risk: retrieved values can flow into scripts or build artifacts if the pipeline is configured carelessly. Track which pipelines can access which vaults and environments, and avoid publishing secret-bearing files. See Azure Pipelines’ Key Vault integration documentation.

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Prefer managed identity where it fits

Where the platform and workload support it, prefer managed identity or native workload identity over manually distributed, long-lived service-to-service credentials. Microsoft’s Safe Secrets Standard says its approach removes unmanaged service-to-service credentials primarily by adopting Microsoft Entra managed identities. This changes how access is granted and discovered; it does not remove the need to inventory identities, permissions, environments, and consumers.

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Determine whether a credential is still active

A credential appearing in a vault, repository, or pipeline does not establish that it is currently accepted by its issuing service. Likewise, a scanner alert or a metadata listing cannot alone tell you whether an application still depends on it. Determine active status from lifecycle metadata where available, the credential’s issuing system, and the systems that consume it. Ask the owner to confirm usage and identify a safe verification path before revocation when the credential is not already known to be exposed.

For each credential, separate these questions in the record:

  • Does the credential still exist? Check its source and lifecycle or revocation metadata, where available.
  • Can it still authenticate? Verify status with the issuing system or an approved owner-led procedure; do not infer validity from a stored copy.
  • Is it still used? Map known consumers and confirm with their owners. Lack of an obvious reference is not proof that there are no consumers.
  • What can it access? Record the assigned privilege, scope, environment, and reachable high-value systems.
  • Has remediation taken effect? Track the rotation or revocation and verify that consumers have moved to the replacement or no longer require access.

When evidence is incomplete, represent status as unverified and assign a follow-up owner. Avoid marking a credential inactive merely because it has an old timestamp, is absent from one scan, or has no known consumer.

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Prioritize findings and remediate safely

Microsoft’s Safe Secrets Standard recommends prioritizing credentials that are externally exposed, long-lived, broadly shared, or able to reach production systems and high-value data. Use those factors as the initial triage dimensions, then include credential owner, type, access scope, and rotation or revocation status. A credential that combines external exposure with broad production access should move ahead of a low-scope, internally contained item.

  1. Contain known exposure. Treat a hard-coded credential detected in a repository as compromised and rotate or revoke it immediately. Do not wait for history rewriting to contain the access.
  2. Find and notify consumers. Identify applications, pipelines, and environments using the old credential. Coordinate a replacement or transition so that remediation does not leave a service relying on an invalid value.
  3. Restrict access where appropriate. Review whether the credential is shared more broadly than required and whether its permissions reach production or high-value data.
  4. Verify the old credential is no longer usable or needed. Use issuer status and owner-confirmed consumer checks; document the verification rather than assuming a successful rotation completed every downstream change.
  5. Update the inventory and close the loop. Record the response state, new ownership or access path, remaining consumers, and any follow-up actions. Keep secret values out of evidence and tickets.

Git history cleanup can be time-intensive and is often unnecessary after revocation; rotation or revocation is the immediate containment action. Decide separately whether removing the material from history is needed. For ongoing management, AWS says Secrets Manager can rotate automatically as often as every four hours. That is a documented service capability, not a recommendation that every credential should rotate on that schedule: feasibility and operational impact depend on the credential’s consumers and service support.

Choose tools by coverage, not by a “clean” result

When comparing scanners, cloud APIs, or inventory platforms, assess the scope they can actually prove and the permissions they need. A single product may not see every place where credentials are stored or used.

  • Surface coverage: distinguish current repository files from full history, public repositories from private and internal ones, and vaults from pipeline variables, runtime configuration, and infrastructure.
  • Organization scope: confirm whether the method covers the intended organizations, accounts or subscriptions, repositories, regions, and projects, and whether it can report at the required organizational level.
  • Detection boundaries: check supported patterns, paired-token rules, exclusions, false positives, and whether prior content is rescanned. Preserve the distinction between no alert and no credential.
  • Metadata and handling: determine whether listings provide identifiers and attributes without values, and whether retrieved values could be written to logs, files, or artifacts.
  • Permissions and identity: document list and read rights, service connections, role trust, managed identities, and the blast radius of the identity performing discovery.
  • Response workflow: verify how findings are assigned, how immediate revocation or rotation is coordinated, and how teams prove the old credential is no longer in use.
  • Availability and cost: repository scanning entitlements vary by repository type and GitHub plan. Verify current terms and ownership before promising coverage or recommending a paid tier.

Maintain a coverage record alongside the findings: source, date, identity used, permission failures, exclusions, and known detection limits. This lets a security engineer distinguish an actual negative result from a scan that did not have access or lacked the relevant pattern coverage.

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Keep the inventory current

An inventory becomes stale as teams create repositories, onboard cloud accounts, change pipeline identities, or replace credentials. Make the process repeatable: maintain the scope register, schedule or trigger scans according to the systems’ capabilities, route findings to named owners, and track unresolved access or coverage gaps. Refresh consumer mappings after rotation and when pipelines or deployment environments change.

Prefer access paths that reduce unmanaged credentials where practical, but continue tracking the identities and permissions that replace them. The durable outcome is not a one-time list; it is a process that can answer where a credential is, who controls it, what can use it, what it can access, and whether remediation has been verified.

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