Protecting Tokens and Assertions from Forgery, Theft, and Misuse: Implementation Recommendations for Agencies and Cloud Service Providers
NIST and CISA publish final interagency report with implementation guidance for protecting tokens and assertions from forgery and misuse.
CISA released a final NIST/CISA interagency report guiding federal agencies and cloud service providers on protecting identity assertions, access tokens, and cryptographic mechanisms underlying modern authentication and authorization. It addresses forgery, theft, and misuse of signed tokens that adversaries use for lateral movement and data access in hybrid and multi-cloud, SSO, federation, and API-based environments. The final version updates token validation, secrets management, and detection-at-scale guidance gathered via the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative, and supports Executive Order 14306 and Secure by Design principles.