Secrets Sprawl: Why IT’s Worst Nightmare Won’t Go Away Anytime Soon!
Secrets sprawl is real, and it’s growing faster than your list of streaming services! According to GitGuardian research, 79% of IT leaders have faced a secrets leak, with 12.7 million credentials hanging out on public GitHub. With non-human identities outnumbering humans 45:1, it’s a machine identity crisis waiting to happen!

Hot Take:
Well, it looks like secrets are out of the bag, and someone’s been snooping through our digital underwear drawer. With IT decision-makers reporting a 79% increase in secrets leaks, it seems hackers are finding our passwords easier than finding Waldo in a candy cane factory. Who knew that “1234” was such a popular password among machine identities? It’s time to stop leaving the digital cookie jar open and start managing our credentials like responsible adults—or at least like responsible robots.
Key Points:
- 79% of IT decision-makers reported experiencing secrets leaks, up from 75% the previous year.
- Over 12.7 million hardcoded credentials found in public GitHub repositories.
- 90% of valid secrets remained active for more than five days.
- Organizations take an average of 27 days to remediate leaked credentials.
- Non-human identities outnumber human identities by a ratio of 45:1.