The operations center provides a credential sharing mechanism that allows global credentials to be accessible across all controllers, regardless of their authentication mapping configuration. This design enables key functionality, such as Shared Agents and Shared Clouds to work seamlessly in all the controllers.
Controllers can access credentials that meet all the following conditions:
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Credentials are defined in operations center’s root (folder-scoped credentials are globally not shared).
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Credentials have the global scope setting (system-scoped credentials are not shared).
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Credentials are not managed by the CloudBees Restricted Credentials plugin (credentials managed by this plugin are not globally shared, but depend on its own access control).
Credential scope restrictions and best practices
For a more secure setup, CloudBees recommends the following best practices:
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Avoid storing sensitive credentials at the operations center’s root.
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Use folder-scoped credentials instead of global credentials where possible. Credentials used by Shared Agents or Shared Clouds should be stored in the root.
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Install the CloudBees Restricted Credentials plugin to limit credential access.
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If none of the above suits your use case, then store credentials in client controllers instead of centralizing in the operations center.
Administrative monitor for shared credentials
CloudBees provides a security administrative monitor that alerts administrators when shared credentials are detected in their environment.
The monitor provides:
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Administrative alerts with detailed information when shared credentials are detected in an operations center which allows untrusted controllers.
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Visibility only to users with administrative privileges.
The monitor can be dismissed if you are confident that the operations center credentials are safe to be visible from controllers with an Untrusted security mapping.