Glossary
Key Rotation
Any cryptographic key can eventually be exposed — through a leaked backup, a compromised machine, or simple accumulation of risk over time. Key rotation limits the damage by giving every key a bounded lifetime: it is retired and replaced on a schedule, or immediately if it is suspected of being compromised, rather than being trusted indefinitely.
Rotation is straightforward to describe and often difficult to operate, because every system that trusts the old key has to learn to trust the new one, ideally without a gap where nothing is trusted and without an overlap so long that the old key remains a viable attack path. Systems built around a single, never-rotated root key tend to treat rotation as a rare, high-risk emergency procedure rather than a routine one — which is itself a sign that the key's lifecycle was not designed for the possibility of compromise.