Policy-As-Code is useless if your service accounts are out of control.

Unchecked service accounts are a hidden attack surface. They accumulate permissions. They bypass least privilege. They outlive their owners. Without automation and policy enforcement, they become a breeding ground for risk.

Policy-As-Code for service accounts fixes this. You write rules as code. You store them in version control. You run them in CI/CD. The policy engine checks every new service account. It enforces naming patterns, limits scopes, blocks dangerous roles, and requires expiration dates.

With Policy-As-Code, there is no manual review backlog. Every change request goes through automated checks. Every violation is flagged before deployment. The history of service account changes lives in Git. Audit is instant. Compliance is constant.

Core principles for Policy-As-Code service accounts:

• Declarative rules: Define what is allowed and forbidden with clear YAML or JSON schema.
• Immutable history: Version policies alongside infrastructure code to track changes over time.
• Continuous enforcement: Integrate with pipelines to run checks on every commit.
• Least privilege by default: Ensure new accounts start with minimal scopes and only gain access through approved policy.

Implementing this requires strong tooling. Policy engines like Open Policy Agent, Conftest, or native cloud policy services can handle rules. Combine these with IaC frameworks to bind policy directly to deployment workflows. Every new account is born compliant.

Service accounts should be ephemeral whenever possible. Policies must enforce expiry and rotation. Secrets should never be embedded in source. Use managed identity solutions and automate rotation.

The benefit is not theoretical. Organizations that adopt Policy-As-Code for service accounts eliminate silent privilege creep. They gain rapid incident response. They pass audits without scrambling at the last minute.

You control access. You enforce policy at scale. And you do it all in plain code.

See Policy-As-Code for service accounts in action with hoop.dev. Deploy your first compliant policy in minutes—watch it catch violations before they hit production.