Zero-touch secrets management: Securing CI/CD pipelines through ephemeral credentials

Modern CI/CD pipelines face a critical security challenge: persistent credentials in static configurations create widespread vulnerability. This talk explores a zero-touch secrets management architecture that eliminates credentials by implementing ephemeral, identity-bound credentials with just-in-time issuance and automatic revocation. The architecture establishes pipeline identity through cryptographic attestation rather than shared secrets, enabling workload-specific credential generation with strict temporal and scope limitations. Organizations implementing this paradigm eliminate standing privileges and achieve automatic credential rotation without manual management burden.