--- title: The Trust Graph: Why Infrastructure Diagrams No Longer... description: Traditional infrastructure diagrams show network topology but fail to capture the trust relationships that determine how modern systems are breached or fail.... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-trust-graph-why-infrastructure-diagrams-no-longer-describe-modern-systems-irufeyrt6 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Trust Graph: Why Infrastructure Diagrams No Longer Describe Modern Systems | daily.dev og:description: Traditional infrastructure diagrams show network topology but fail to capture the trust relationships that determine how modern systems are breached or fail.... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-trust-graph-why-infrastructure-diagrams-no-longer-describe-modern-systems-irufeyrt6 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/IRufeYrT6.png og:image:alt: The Trust Graph: Why Infrastructure Diagrams No Longer Describe Modern Systems og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Trust Graph: Why Infrastructure Diagrams No Longer Describe Modern Systems **[DevOps.com](https://daily.dev/sources/devops)** · 12 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Traditional infrastructure diagrams show network topology but fail to capture the trust relationships that determine how modern systems are breached or fail. The concept of a 'trust graph' — mapping identities, permissions, and relationships between service accounts, CI jobs, AI agents, OAuth grants, and OIDC federations — is proposed as the more accurate model. Machine identities now outnumber human identities by ratios ranging from 17:1 to 144:1, yet ~80% of organizations lack formal policies for creating or retiring them. Two 2025 incidents illustrate the risks: the tj-actions/changed-files supply chain attack (CVE-2025-30066), which exposed CI/CD secrets across 23,000 repositories via a low-privilege upstream dependency, and the Salesloft Drift OAuth token theft that gave attackers access to 700+ enterprise environments. The piece argues that reliability engineering and identity security must converge, as expired workload identities cause outages just as stolen OAuth tokens cause breaches — both are trust edge failures. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Why short-lived systems need stronger identity governance](https://daily.dev/posts/why-short-lived-systems-need-stronger-identity-governance-2mp3kjrvi) · CSO Online · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Identity Infrastructure: Why Credentials Matter More Than Directories](https://daily.dev/posts/identity-infrastructure-why-credentials-matter-more-than-directories-fvlqoenhu) · GitGuardian · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Beyond the perimeter: Why identity and cyber security are one single story](https://daily.dev/posts/beyond-the-perimeter-why-identity-and-cyber-security-are-one-single-story-0spncxxof) · IT Security Guru · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Closing the Identity Gaps in Critical Infrastructure Security](https://daily.dev/posts/closing-the-identity-gaps-in-critical-infrastructure-security-irguezhxd) · BleepingComputer · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Risky identities continue to plague cloud infrastructures](https://daily.dev/posts/risky-identities-continue-to-plague-cloud-infrastructures-vc4c8iuxq) · Sysdig Blog · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#security](https://daily.dev/tags/security), [#authentication](https://daily.dev/tags/authentication), [#iam](https://daily.dev/tags/iam) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-trust-graph-why-infrastructure-diagrams-no-longer-describe-modern-systems-irufeyrt6) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Trust Graph: Why Infrastructure Diagrams No Longer Describe Modern Systems","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-trust-graph-why-infrastructure-diagrams-no-longer-describe-modern-systems-irufeyrt6","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-trust-graph-why-infrastructure-diagrams-no-longer-describe-modern-systems-irufeyrt6"},"datePublished":"2026-07-23T12:43:13.331Z","dateModified":"2026-07-23T12:43:39.526Z","description":"Traditional infrastructure diagrams show network topology but fail to capture the trust relationships that determine how modern systems are breached or fail....","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/edce81bbe1f0e6b653e6ece3ff325ce3?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/edce81bbe1f0e6b653e6ece3ff325ce3?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"DevOps.com","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"DevOps.com","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/db8f2265cff0416c878c6e7e92bb8715","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/devops"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-trust-graph-why-infrastructure-diagrams-no-longer-describe-modern-systems-irufeyrt6","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"security,authentication,iam","timeRequired":"PT12M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"DevOps.com","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/devops"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"The Trust Graph: Why Infrastructure Diagrams No Longer Describe Modern Systems"}]} ```