Stress-test a token expiry policy before TTLs, rotation rules, and lockout paths harden into what every auth session will quote.
Token expiry policies fail when the doc invents rotation speed clients never had, when refresh paths dual-count the same session as live and as revoked, when mobile and partner embeds still lack a named owner, and when security cannot show who decides after a mass logout. A neat auth diagram is not evidence.
Freeze the policy
One sentence for why the expiry exists, which clients and token classes it covers, who owns rotation, revocation, and customer messaging, and the rollback trigger if lockout rates or support volume past a named threshold. Attach the TTL table, sample refresh logs, client inventory, and the measured path from expiry to re-auth. If security, platform, and product disagree on which clients are truly covered, stop and reconcile first.
Name the decision you will make if the stress test finds nothing new, and the delay criteria if any money-path client still lacks a named rotation owner or a verified drill.
Attack surfaces
- Client fiction: TTLs that look short while embedded partners still cache past the window.
- Refresh blur: rotation claims that invent completeness the refresh endpoint never showed.
- Lockout theater: mass-logout plans that still lack a customer-comms owner.
- Support lag: macros that trail the customer-visible auth error rate.
- Partial-fleet silence: clients that land expired without a decision owner or measured lag.
Optional legal seat if session retention binds the form. Optional finance seat if billed API tokens bind the form.
How to run it
Feed Pingpong the draft policy, client inventory, and open risk list. Early passes steelman the TTL design. Later passes attack from security, platform, product, support, and skeptic seats. End with a pass that turns surviving objections into clearer owners, a timed rotation drill, or a hold. Delete invented "clients already rotate cleanly" claims and dual-counted success rates.
Ask security and product seats to price the behavior the published policy will invite. If day-one docs promise silent refresh while the last drill stranded mobile users for an hour, customers will treat the policy as false. Write the intended TTLs, the covered clients, and the language you will refuse, then attack whether trust still holds under that discipline.
When the policy coincides with an SSO change or a rate limit change, force eng and support seats to map every claim that still assumes the old session layout. Partner embeds, CLI tools, and admin panels count. A policy that looks clean in a PDF while a critical client still pins long-lived tokens will fail on the first forced rotation. Related: stress-test an SSO rollout, stress-test a rate limit change, pretend you are the CISO, pretend you are the security lead, and the war-game decisions hub. Process: how to run a Pingpong.