Comparison
Short-lived credentialvsWorkload identity
Short-lived credential
the token the workload holds expires in fifteen minutes, so a leaked one is worth almost nothing by the time it is found.
Credentials issued on demand with a short lifetime and renewed continuously, rather than static secrets that live until someone rotates them. It converts the security question from 'has this leaked' to 'how long is the window', and it removes rotation as a scheduled human task. It requires an identity the issuer trusts, which is why it and workload identity always arrive together.
Full entry →Workload identity
the service proves what it is to the cloud without holding any credential, because the platform attests to it.
Giving a running workload a cryptographic identity derived from where and what it is, which other systems can verify, instead of a shared secret it must carry. It is what eliminates long-lived keys in application configuration and what makes mutual TLS between services possible without a certificate distribution problem. It also makes authorisation legible, since policies name the service rather than an opaque key.
Full entry →