Time to Revoke: The Security Metric CISOs Need to Track Exposed Credentials

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Security teams have long relied on mean time to detect and mean time to remediate, but neither metric confirms whether an exposed credential was actually invalidated. 'Time to revoke' fills this gap by measuring how long a leaked credential remains usable after it has been confirmed valid. The metric is calculated as the difference between the validation timestamp and the confirmed invalidation timestamp, with the clock stopping only when the credential is revoked, rotated, or expired — not merely removed from a repository or ticket. Common credential types at risk include API keys, cloud tokens, OAuth secrets, and database connection strings, all of which remain exploitable until properly invalidated. CISOs are advised to track median and P90 time to revoke, SLA compliance rates, and the percentage of secrets still valid after detection to better quantify and reduce their exposure window.

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