ISC2 CISSP Practice Question

The correct answer is to implement a secrets management solution. Service accounts typically have elevated privileges and require special handling compared to regular user accounts. When service account credentials are hardcoded in application code, they present several security risks: they can be exposed to unauthorized users, cannot be easily rotated, and may lead to privilege escalation. A secrets management solution provides a centralized, secure way to store, access, and rotate credentials. This allows applications to retrieve credentials programmatically at runtime without embedding them in code, supports automated credential rotation, implements access controls over who can retrieve credentials, and maintains audit logs of credential access. This approach follows security best practices for service account management by ensuring credentials are protected, rotatable, and their usage is monitored.