PAM-Damonium IV: The Vault of Broken Promises

Introduction

Behold the ancient relic of privileged access management (PAM): the password vault. It swears it will rotate secrets, never share credentials and provide least privilege. This blog investigates why vaults alone aren't enough and what you should demand from them.

Our story…

They called it "The Vault."  It was supposed to be secure, a place of truth, trust and quarterly password rotations — except no one remembered the rotation part. Or the truth part.

Over time, the vault became a digital hoarder's paradise: hardcoded credentials, shared root passwords and something labeled "admin1234_temp_DO_NOT_DELETE" that five departments were actively using in production.

One day, someone accidentally locked themselves out of a server, went to retrieve the password and discovered that the vault had…nothing. Just an expired credential last updated during the Game of Thrones finale.

Moral? A password vault isn't a sacred relic — it's a tool. And if it's filled with broken promises, it's just a glorified spreadsheet in a trench coat.

The problem

Password vaults are necessary. But when treated as the entirety of privileged access management (PAM), they become the digital equivalent of a junk drawer: full of secrets you forgot about. They start strong: "We'll rotate passwords!" "No more shared credentials!" But over time, good intentions fade. Rotations slow down. Integration plans stall. And before you know it, the vault has become a glorified storage closet for ancient, static secrets.

Example: In 2022, a dev team hardcoded database credentials into their CI/CD tool, believing them to be protected because the vault existed elsewhere. The breach exposed customer data when the tool was compromised.

• Overreliance on vaulting alone
• No integration with ephemeral credentials
• Rotations done quarterly… maybe

Business risk

Static secrets are like milk: They expire. Leave them long enough, and something will start to smell — usually during your audit. When credentials sit untouched, unmonitored and universally accessible, they become security liabilities with admin rights. Vaults that aren't automated or integrated just lull you into a false sense of security until a penetration test (or worse, a breach) exposes them for what they are: broken promises.

Example: A European bank failed a GDPR audit because admin credentials stored in their vault had not been rotated for 18 months and had been reused across multiple applications.

• Static credentials = persistent risk
• Stale secrets across environments
• Lost trust with auditors and users

What to do about it

Evolve your vault into an intelligent secret orchestration hub, integrated across workflows and not isolated in a compliance checkbox. Vaults should be smarter than a glorified password spreadsheet. They should rotate, retire, inject and expire secrets automatically, as if their job depended on it (because it does).

• Automate credential rotation and revocation.
  Example: AWS Secrets Manager auto-rotates credentials for RDS instances every 30 days with zero manual intervention.
• Integrate with secrets management tools (DevOps alignment). 
  Example: Spotify uses Vault by HashiCorp integrated into its CI/CD pipeline to generate ephemeral secrets per build.
• Use vaulting as the start of the journey, not the destination.
  Example: A retail chain moved beyond vaulting by layering access request workflows, session brokering and least privilege automation atop its initial CyberArk deployment.

Top 3 vendors for password vaulting and secrets management

CyberArk Enterprise Password Vault

Why: Industry-standard solution for secure password storage, rotation and least privilege enforcement.
🔗CyberArk EPV - Why It's A Good Investment | SaaS & On-Prem

HashiCorp Vault

Why: Manages dynamic secrets and provides fine-grained access control for apps, APIs and systems.
🔗https://www.hashicorp.com/products/vault

BeyondTrust Password Safe

Why: Centralizes privileged credential management with automated rotation, just-in-time access, session monitoring and deep audit capabilities — ideal for enterprises seeking a full-stack PAM solution.
🔗https://www.beyondtrust.com/products/password-safe

Closing Thoughts…

Don't let your vault gather dust. Choose a solution that automates, integrates and acts like part of your security team — not just a digital filing cabinet. Secrets should be short-lived, discoverable and revocable. Bonus points if the vault looks great doing it, but at the very least, it should work harder than your shared Excel sheet.

Treat the vault like a bouncer, not a bartender. It shouldn't just hold the secrets — it should know who's coming in, who's going out and when it's time to cut someone off. And if you find yourself saying, "We'll rotate that next quarter," just remember: in cyber years, that's basically never.

So lock it down, rotate like your compliance audit is tomorrow, and automate like your job depends on it. Because it does. And if not yours, definitely the guy who named the production password 'Winter2021!'.