How Keeper Prevents Secrets Sprawl in DevOps Environments

Secrets sprawl refers to the insecure spread of credentials, tokens, keys and other sensitive information across codebases, cloud services and infrastructure. It introduces significant operational and security challenges, including weak points in CI/CD pipelines, limited visibility into where secrets are stored, error-prone manual rotation processes and a higher risk of compliance failures. Keeper helps prevent secrets sprawl in DevOps environments through its Keeper Secrets Manager® platform by removing hard-coded credentials and securely storing them in a zero-knowledge, encrypted vault.

Continue reading to learn about the risks of secrets sprawl and how Keeper helps prevent it in DevOps environments. 

Why secrets sprawl threatens your critical infrastructure

Here are three ways unmanaged credentials put your critical infrastructure at risk. 

The modern DevOps environment is high-speed and high-risk

Modern DevOps environments prioritize rapid development, CI/CD pipelines and multi-cloud orchestration. However, this speed often sacrifices security. The rush to automate and deploy quickly creates a high-risk environment where credentials are reused across tools, systems and environments. According to GitHub, 40% of developers have encountered security incidents due to hard-coded credentials in source code, highlighting the dangers of poor secrets management in fast-moving pipelines. The decentralized structure of DevOps only makes it harder to maintain consistent security policies and enforce good secret hygiene.

Hidden credentials create massive attack surfaces

Hidden credentials increase an organization’s attack surface when not handled properly. According to GitGuardian’s State of Secrets Sprawl 2025 report, about 23.7 million hard-coded secrets were leaked on public GitHub repositories in 2024. This widespread exposure often stems from common mistakes, such as accidentally committing secrets to Git repositories, sharing them in messaging tools like Slack, hard-coding them in YAML configuration files or using insecure channels like plaintext email. These practices make it easy for cybercriminals to exploit sensitive information, potentially allowing them to access sensitive systems, escalate privileges and take control of critical infrastructure.

Critical systems need airtight control

According to Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report, about 88% of basic web application attacks involved stolen credentials – a clear sign that weak or exposed secrets remain one of the most exploited vulnerabilities in organizational security. Without strict access controls, critical infrastructure such as databases, production workloads and servers becomes vulnerable to misuse, compromise and unauthorized access. These systems form the backbone of an organization, and they’re only as secure as the secrets that protect them. 

How Keeper stops secrets sprawl in DevOps environments

Keeper stops secrets sprawl in DevOps environments by centralizing secrets, enforcing least-privilege access and providing full visibility, all while integrating seamlessly with your existing stack and workflows.

Centralizes secrets in a unified, encrypted vault

Keeper Secrets Manager consolidates secrets into a single, unified platform. Secrets are stored in a zero-knowledge encrypted vault, ensuring that even Keeper cannot access them. By preventing secrets from being scattered across scripts, config files, Git repositories, messaging apps and CI/CD pipelines, Keeper reduces exposure points that cybercriminals frequently target. Keeper Secrets Manager also helps security teams identify hard-coded credentials, eliminating vulnerabilities before they lead to a breach.

Enforces least-privilege access to secrets by role, team and environment

Keeper enforces least-privilege access to secrets by allowing organizations to define who can access secrets based on Role-Based Access Controls (RBAC). RBAC enables administrators to control access to secrets across development, staging and production environments. These access policies can be easily created, managed and enforced through the Keeper Admin Console, where administrators can assign roles, configure permissions and apply rules across the entire organization.

Additionally, Keeper integrates with System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) and  Identity Providers (IdPs) to automate user provisioning and deprovisioning processes. As users join, change roles or leave an organization, their access permissions can be automatically created, updated or revoked. This eliminates the need for shared credentials and reduces the risk of lingering access from deprovisioned users. 

Delivers complete visibility and auditability of secret usage

Keeper Secrets Manager automatically records all activity related to secrets, including access events, injections into scripts or CI/CD workflows and modifications to records. Each log entry includes data such as user identity, timestamp, device, location and the specific secret that was accessed or modified. This makes it simple for organizations to support compliance, incident response and forensic investigations. 

Furthermore, Keeper integrates seamlessly with Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) tools, such as Splunk, Azure Sentinel and Datadog. Logs from Keeper can be forwarded to these platforms for centralized monitoring, correlation and analysis. If unusual activity is detected, the SIEM can trigger real-time alerts or automate response actions to contain the threat. 

Rotates credentials automatically across infrastructure

Keeper can automate both scheduled and on-demand rotation of service account credentials and secrets across cloud platforms, databases and on-premise systems. Admins can configure rotation policies based on set intervals or specific events, such as the end of a privileged session. Rotation is performed using the Keeper Secrets Manager CLI, which securely connects to target systems, updates credentials and stores the new secrets in the Keeper Vault. Manual rotation processes are eliminated, reducing the risk of human error and misconfiguration. 

Automated rotation ensures that outdated secrets are regularly replaced, significantly reducing the risk of unauthorized access. Even if a secret is leaked, regular rotation limits its usefulness to attackers by narrowing its window of exposure. This is especially important in CI/CD pipelines, where static credentials can be hard-coded or accidentally committed to version control. 

Replaces hard-coded secrets with secure secret injection

Keeper stops secrets sprawl by replacing hard-coded secrets with real-time secret injection. Instead of storing secrets in code or configuration files, tools like Terraform, Helm, Jenkins, Kubernetes and GitHub Actions can be configured to fetch secrets from Keeper just before deployment or execution. This process is automatic, and no one needs to retrieve or enter credentials manually. Once the task is complete, access is revoked, and the secret can be rotated to prevent reuse. Eliminating hard-coded credentials reduces the risk of exposure in public repositories or misconfigured environments. 

Seamlessly integrates with your existing DevOps stack

Keeper is designed to seamlessly integrate with an existing DevOps stack. Its agentless architecture eliminates the need to install software on each server, device and application you want to protect. Instead, it connects to systems using existing protocols, simplifying deployment and reducing the need for custom configurations or additional maintenance. 

Popular tools that Keeper supports:

• Jenkins
• GitHub Actions
• GitLab CI
• Circle CI
• Azure DevOps
• Terraform
• Kubernetes
• Ansible 
• Pulumi

Eliminate secrets sprawl with Keeper Secrets Manager

Unmanaged secrets and credential sprawl can lead to the compromise of an organization’s most critical infrastructure. Centralized management helps prevent this by ensuring that secrets are not overlooked, improperly stored or accidentally exposed.

By implementing Keeper Secrets Manager, your organization can replace hard-coded credentials, centralize credential storage in a secure vault, enforce access controls and policies, automate credential rotation across infrastructure and multi-cloud environments and streamline DevOps workflows. 

Request a demo of Keeper Secrets Manager to see how your organization can eliminate secrets sprawl. 

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