Password and Key Rotation

Any company that protects information using passwords and keys likely participates in password and key rotation to some extent. This practice is essential for credential management, especially when managing passwords and keys at scale. Despite debates on its necessity, key rotation remains critical today—businesses must understand its purpose and follow best practices to ensure the long-term security of their secrets.

Keeping systems secure requires more than strong passwords; it demands ongoing maintenance to minimize vulnerabilities. Regular rotation limits the risk of unauthorized access by ensuring compromised credentials are swiftly replaced. Understanding how key rotation works across various systems strengthens security protocols and prevents credential misuse.

This article dives into everything organizations need to know about this essential credential management practice.

What Is Password and Key Rotation?

Password and key rotation are variations of the same credential management principle: resetting the credential periodically. Password rotation involves changing a password, and key rotation involves retiring and replacing an old key with a new cryptographic key.

Modifying the original credential shortens the period in which the password, key, or certificate is active. This limits the timeframe available for the password or key to be compromised, thereby minimizing the risk of password and key-based vulnerabilities.

When leveraging password and key rotation, it’s essential to establish credential lifecycles — that is, how long they remain unrotated. Organizations must determine the appropriate duration for a key or password to remain active, and how often they should be rotated. Password expiration and automatic key rotation can help define and maintain a consistent and reliable credential lifecycle.

How Often Should Keys and Passwords Be Rotated?

Ideally, organizations would rotate their credentials as often as possible. But with so many operations and projects happening within the modern enterprise, it’s unrealistic to expect all end-users to remember to rotate their passwords and keys diligently and regularly. Therefore, organizations must determine, enforce, and maintain unique lifecycles for specific credentials.

The lifecycle of a key or password (how frequently it should be rotated) depends on a variety of factors, primarily:

1. Nature of the Credential: Some credentials, such as passwords for standard user accounts, may only need a rotation interval of 60 or 90 days. However, superuser accounts and other privileged end-user credentials will likely need more frequent rotation. It’s always better to rotate keys and passwords too often than too little.

2. Security Importance: Newly-rotated passwords and keys must be widely implemented across systems, networks, and end-user accounts. However, the purpose of these credentials will influence their lifecycle. Credentials that hold extra-sensitive and secret information require shorter lifecycles; some credentials may even necessitate one-time passwords (OTPS) or ephemeral tickets.

3. Compromise: If you believe a password or key has been compromised — whether you receive a third-party notice, detect suspicious activity, or simply have a gut feeling that something is wrong — you must immediately rotate the credential. Keys and passwords should also rotate whenever security guidelines shift, stronger key algorithms are discovered, and enterprise tools and services change or update.

Determining key rotation frequency is crucial for security, as it depends on factors like credential type, sensitivity, and organizational policies. Establishing well-defined rotation schedules minimizes risks while maintaining operational efficiency and compliance without unnecessary overhead.

The Importance of Key and Password Rotation

Key rotation offers proactive protection against key modification, theft, and other forms of compromise. Regular rotation reduces the number of credentials that could become vulnerable due to compromise and limits how much information is encrypted using the same algorithm. This helps organizations promote secure, resilient systems and data.

Along with proactively reducing risks of key theft, rotating your SSH keys helps prevent long-term key-based attacks. Because compromised keys are still technically “valid” credentials, stolen keys often go undetected in enterprise networks. This is why it’s vital to rotate keys — a malicious actor may have stolen your key months ago and is waiting for the moment to strike. 

Password rotation also prevents password modification and theft via methods ranging from brute force attacks to phishing attempts, malware, and more. Regularly rotating passwords lessens the chances of password-related cyberattacks by reducing the timeframe and surface area for attackers to strike.

Rotating passwords prevents malicious actors from accessing and exploiting these credentials while restricting access to former employees. This prevents both accidental tampering and purposeful sharing with competitors or other malicious parties. 

Password rotation also minimizes the impact of a successful breach. When passwords are rotated often, it’s harder for hackers to unlock confidential information using partial credentials (such as only a username).

Password and key rotation are still incredibly vital for organizations today. Not only is it an established way of managing passwords, but key and password rotation is still mandatory within many companies. Besides, some legacy systems only support vaulting and rotation and cannot leverage modern credential management practices.

Risks and Challenges of Manual Password and Key Rotation

1. Promotion of Weak Password Creation

Passwords should contain lengthy, randomized phrases or characters that hackers can’t easily guess. Passwords should also never be reused or repeated, but when end-users have to change passwords often and remember many credentials, they tend to recycle them instead. According to Comparitech, employees reuse passwords an average of 13 times. Surprisingly, IT professionals reuse passwords more than other end-users.

2. Encouragement of Poor Storage Practices

Manual password rotation promotes poor credential storage practices, like storing valuable credentials in an Excel spreadsheet. Manually collecting, storing, and protecting passwords is not scalable at an enterprise level. The average number of passwords an employee must keep track of is 191. Plus, storing passwords in unsafe environments like Excel spreadsheets, notebooks, and password managers increases the risk of theft and compromise.

3. Lack of Proper Tracking

When it comes to maintaining and enforcing key management best practices, rotation tends to get in the way. The number of SSH keys in enterprise environments can reach three million, and remembering to regularly rotate all these keys can quickly grow into an unmanageable and overwhelming task. And since compromised keys are seldom detected, manual key rotation often results in compromised keys slipping under the radar.

4. Inconsistent Credentials

Passwords and keys are often leveraged or stored on multiple machines. When end-users manually store, rotate, and maintain their credentials, they must remember to copy new credentials to all locations—and delete the old ones. This results in lots of tedious and error-prone tasks.

The Hidden Downsides of Password and Key Rotation

Many organizations have swapped manual password and key rotation for automated practices, reducing a number of the risks mentioned above. However, even intelligent credential rotation systems, which automatically change passwords and keys according to set rules and regulations, cannot protect organizations against every cybersecurity threat.

Hackers move notoriously fast, and while some may lurk in the shadows, many will jump at the first opportunity to strike. Automated credential management tools are certainly a step in the right direction, but they’re not fail-proof. Due to all the challenges associated with credential management, any environment that uses passwords and keys will eventually encounter related cybersecurity issues and vulnerabilities.

This is why the question of “What if there were no credentials to manage?” is sparking a global shift towards passwordless and keyless environments. In enterprise networks with no long-term credentials (where all credentials are ephemeral tickets that expire after authorized use), rotation and other credential management challenges will become obsolete and unnecessary, reducing human errors and shrinking the chances of compromise. 

Tech giants have seen the benefits and are leading this transition. Uber has a passwordless certificate authority, Netflix has BLESS, and Facebook has built secure and scalable access with SSH without keys. 

However, the move to passwordless and keyless security won’t happen overnight, and not every company can or should create their solution in-house. Businesses need a hybrid solution that leverages modern-day credential management practices while allowing for a move to passwordless authentication.

Enjoy Rotation and Passwordless Security with PrivX™

SSH’s PrivX™ Hybrid PAM is a powerful, highly automated, and hybrid privileged access management (PAM) solution built for future-proof cybersecurity. PrivX™ Hybrid PAM offers end-users credential rotation, vaulting, and other basic credential management services simultaneously while supporting the migration towards a more advanced, efficient, and passwordless & keyless environment.

PrivX™ Hybrid PAM’s hybrid approach offers modernized access management capabilities while taking care of your legacy environments. It can vault or rotate your keys and passwords, and leverage role-based access control (RBAC) using just-in-time (JIT) tickets with just enough access (JEA). It can also grant passwordless and keyless SSH access to hybrid cloud targets, grant single-sign-on (SSO) to privileged accounts, and build an immutable infrastructure that accounts for future PAM requirements.

Want to fully automate your credential management and move to a credentialless environment at your own pace? Book a demo today to experience the excellent features of PrivX™ Hybrid PAM first-hand.

FAQ

What is key rotation in cybersecurity?

Key rotation is the periodic replacement of cryptographic keys to enhance security. It reduces the risk of unauthorized access by ensuring outdated or compromised keys cannot be exploited indefinitely, thereby maintaining the confidentiality and integrity of sensitive data.

Why is key rotation important?

Key rotation minimizes the impact of compromised keys, reduces the risk of unauthorized decryption, and ensures alignment with security standards. It strengthens access controls and helps maintain secure systems, especially in environments with sensitive information.

How often should cryptographic keys be rotated?

Rotation schedules depend on the sensitivity of the key, regulatory requirements, and organizational policies. High-risk keys often need rotation every few weeks, while less critical keys can follow longer cycles, balancing security with operational efficiency.

What are the challenges of manual key rotation?

Manual key rotation is prone to errors, inconsistencies, and inefficiency at scale. Challenges include weak or reused credentials, difficulty maintaining synchronization across systems, and the inability to effectively manage large numbers of keys.

What are ephemeral credentials, and how do they relate to key rotation?

Ephemeral credentials are short-lived keys or certificates that expire after use. They eliminate the need for long-term key storage, addressing key rotation challenges by ensuring credentials are temporary and reducing the risk of exploitation.