How to scale secrets governance with Change Request Policies

Frank, the DevOps team lead, needs to rotate credentials for the company's database. He posts an update in Slack and follows up by emailing the new credentials. A backend engineer misses the Slack message entirely, pushed out of view by newer conversations. Frustrated, he keeps trying to access the database using outdated credentials. At the same time, Frank gets distracted mid-task and accidentally CCs the wrong person. Suddenly, sensitive database credentials land in an unauthorized inbox. Someone outside the company now holds the keys to customer data.

You might think this sounds exaggerated, but how unrealistic is it? Many teams still manage sensitive secrets like API keys, passwords, and database credentials through informal channels like Slack or email. Such practices can quickly escalate into serious security breaches. Uber learned that the hard way in 2016 when attackers accessed a private GitHub repository where AWS credentials had been accidentally committed. This compromised the data of over 57 million users.

Instead of reacting to incidents after the damage is done, competent teams put structured controls in their process early on. That's what scalable secrets governance is about: building clear ownership, structured approvals, and traceable changes into managing sensitive information. The result is that operations stay secure, fast, and predictable as you grow.

This article explores the core principles of scalable secrets governance: why it matters, how it works, and how Change Request Policies help implement it in a way that supports safer, faster, and more accountable team collaboration.

What scalable secrets governance looks like

Scalable governance means putting the proper structure in place to manage secrets as your systems and teams expand. Locking things down is only half the equation. The real challenge is creating systems that can grow without breaking.

That means defining roles, routines, access levels, and communication flows that don’t buckle under the weight of more developers, services, or complexity.

Instead of passing credentials around or relying on ad hoc channels, scalable governance treats secrets management as a serious part of day-to-day operations. It’s one thing to control access. It’s another to define responsibility, set clear rules, and track every change.

When done right, secret governance at scale shows a few standout traits:

• Clear ownership and accountability: Everyone knows who owns which secrets, who can change them, and who needs to approve those changes.
• Predictable approval processes: Approvals don’t live in Slack threads. They follow a repeatable flow, which means less confusion and more consistency.
• No single point of failure: One person doesn’t bottleneck secrets. If someone’s out, the process continues without delay or risk.
• Easy audits: Without digging through chat logs or email threads, teams can pull timestamped logs to trace who accessed what, when, and why.
• The balance between control and developer speed: Security doesn’t get in the way of progress. Developers still move fast but within guardrails that keep systems safe.

Even in larger organizations, finding that balance is critical. If processes are too loose, things slip through the cracks. But developers get blocked if they’re too strict, and that frustration can lead to risky workarounds. Scalable governance sits in the middle: it offers structure without creating bottlenecks. Without it, teams face avoidable and recurring issues.

When scalable governance is missing, these problems follow

Without scalable governance, teams often find themselves dealing with the same costly problems again and again.

Here are a few challenges that tend to surface:

• No separation of duties: Teams often step on each other's toes without clear roles or checks and balances. One person may unknowingly undo another's work, and changes go unchecked because there's no hierarchy or formal approval chain.
• Ineffective auditing: When approvals happen over Slack or email, there's no reliable trail of what changed, who approved it, or when it happened. This makes auditing feel slow and incomplete, like frustrating detective work.
• Compliance risks: Weak auditing and inconsistent record-keeping can easily lead to compliance failures with standards like GDPR, HIPAA, or SOC 2. Fines can run into millions, and losing a compliance certification can damage business relationships or block enterprise deals.
• Secrets drift: Without proper tracking and control, secrets quickly become inconsistent across environments and even within the same team. This leads to secrets sprawl, over-permissioned accounts, and a greater risk of breaches or accidental exposure.
• Deployment slowdowns: Informal governance slows everyone down. Manual handoffs, unclear ownership, and inconsistent processes all compound to delay deployments, create bottlenecks, and increase operational risk. For early-stage startups, these slowdowns can mean missed deadlines, lost revenue, or even product failure.

The absence of scalable secrets governance creates risk, not just inefficiencies. Teams that want to grow safely and move fast need to invest in processes that make governance easy to follow, repeatable, and built for scale.

Where Change Request Policies strengthen governance at scale

One effective method teams can adopt is change request policies. They give teams a clear, structured way to manage secrets while preserving security, accountability, and speed.

We built Doppler’s Change Request Policies to help teams manage secrets updates securely and at scale. Access is role-based; security teams can define the policies, while engineering leads and approvers can apply them as needed. These policies outline how secrets are requested, reviewed, and approved across a team. These workflows bring structure and accountability into the change process through features like:

Set required approvers

Approvals should never be a one-person job, especially when secrets are involved. You reduce risk and promote accountability by requiring at least two team members to review a change. With Doppler, you can set a minimum number of approvers for each environment or even specific configs within an environment.

Screenshot of Doppler's UI showing how to set the minimum number of required approvers for a config or environment.

Block self-approval

Letting someone approve their change defeats the purpose of review. It eliminates oversight and opens the door for mistakes or intentional misuse. Blocking self-approval enforces a simple but powerful rule: no change goes live without another set of eyes. Doppler supports this by allowing teams to restrict users from approving their requests. This adds a layer of accountability and helps meet compliance requirements around change controls.

Screenshot showing the option to restrict users from approving their own change requests in Doppler.

Define approval groups

Instead of assigning approvers individually, you can group team members based on their roles, such as"DevOps,""Security," or"Platform," and give those groups approval rights for specific projects or environments. This makes management easier and guarantees that the right people are always responsible for reviewing sensitive changes.

Screenshot displaying how to create approval groups by team role for secret review in Doppler.

Target policies to specific environments or branches

Not every environment needs the same level of control. For example, development might allow single approvals for speed, while production demands stricter checks.You can apply different approval rules to specific environments or individual configs with Change Request Policies. This makes it easy to tighten control where it matters most without slowing down lower-risk workflows.

Screenshot showing how to apply different approval policies to specific environments or configs in Doppler.

Screenshot showing a created policy for specific environments and config in Doppler.

Centralized auditing

Change requests provide an audit trail of all activity around secret requests and approvals. Instead of digging through chat logs or switching between tools, everything is recorded in one place. The log keeps teams accountable and makes managing security reviews and compliance audits much more manageable.

Screenshot of Doppler’s audit trail that logs change requests, approvals, and related activity.

Why wait?

Most teams wait until something goes wrong to take governance seriously. But Change Request Policies give you a way to build trust, accountability, and speed into your secret workflows from day one.

Doppler supports this approach by making approval policies, access controls, and audit trails easy to implement with no custom tooling required. If you're ready to start, sign up for Doppler and explore how Change Request Policies work in practice.