ISC2 Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) Practice Question

The principle of least privilege and avoidance of long-term credentials are achieved by configuring the build service to assume a dedicated IAM role in the production account through the cloud provider's Security Token Service (STS). When the pipeline starts, STS issues short-lived, automatically expiring credentials that grant only the permissions defined in the role's policy. This eliminates the need to store permanent keys and confines the pipeline to the exact privileges required.

Using hard-coded access keys or root credentials violates least-privilege and creates persistent secret-management risks. Injecting SSH keys into virtual machines solves remote-login needs but does not address authorization to cloud APIs, nor does it remove long-lived credentials from the pipeline. Therefore, leveraging STS to assume a minimally scoped role is the most appropriate solution.