What are IBM Cloud API keys?

IBM Cloud API keys are credentials that are associated with a user’s identity in an IBM Cloud account. Only a specific user can create, update, and delete an API key for themself in an account. The API key often acts as both a unique identifier and a secret token for authentication, and it has a set of access privileges that is specific to the user who created it. API keys can be used in the command-line interface (CLI) or as part of automation to log in to applications as a specific user. 

API key cleanup for users removed from an account 

When you remove a user from an account, all of the Identity and Access Management (IAM) access policies for the user are deleted, so the user loses all access to resources in that account. However, previously, the API keys for removed users were not deleted automatically, so API keys still existed for users without access to the account. 

Don’t worry, this wasn’t a security issue because the user’s access is taken away when they are removed from the account. However, before the recent changes, if you happened to add the user back to the account, the API keys they created for themselves were still available to be used again. 

We understand that you might not expect the API keys to be kept after you remove a user, so we updated the way API keys are handled for users that are removed from an account. There is no action or cleanup that you need to do. IBM Cloud now completes the following actions on your behalf when you remove a user from your account:

• If a user is removed from an account, the API keys are immediately removed.
• If a user is added back to an account, the API keys that they previously created are no longer available or valid.
• If a user was removed from an account before this update, we’ll make sure that their API keys are removed too.

Check out the documentation to learn more about API keys in IBM Cloud.