Cohere Security Basics

Cohere Security Basics

Overview

Security best practices for Cohere API keys, request validation, and data protection. Cohere uses bearer token auth with trial and production key tiers.

Prerequisites

• Cohere account at dashboard.cohere.com
• Understanding of environment variables
• Secret management solution for production

Instructions

Step 1: API Key Management

# NEVER hardcode keys — use environment variables
export CO_API_KEY="your-key-here"

# .env file (MUST be git-ignored)
CO_API_KEY=your-key-here

# .gitignore (mandatory entries)
.env
.env.local
.env.*.local

Key types:

• Trial keys — free, rate-limited, for development only
• Production keys — metered billing, for live applications

Step 2: Runtime Validation

import { CohereClientV2 } from 'cohere-ai';

function createSecureClient(): CohereClientV2 {
  const apiKey = process.env.CO_API_KEY;

  if (!apiKey) {
    throw new Error('CO_API_KEY is required. Set it as an environment variable.');
  }

  // Basic key format check
  if (apiKey.length < 20) {
    throw new Error('CO_API_KEY appears malformed. Check dashboard.cohere.com.');
  }

  return new CohereClientV2({ token: apiKey });
}

Step 3: Key Rotation Procedure

# 1. Generate new key in Cohere dashboard
#    → dashboard.cohere.com → API Keys → Create new key

# 2. Deploy new key (keep old key active)
# Vercel:
vercel env add CO_API_KEY production

# AWS:
aws secretsmanager update-secret --secret-id cohere/api-key --secret-string "new-key"

# GCP:
echo -n "new-key" | gcloud secrets versions add cohere-api-key --data-file=-

# 3. Verify new key works
curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer NEW_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  https://api.cohere.com/v2/chat \
  -d '{"model":"command-r7b-12-2024","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"test"}]}'
# Should return 200

# 4. Revoke old key in dashboard
# 5. Monitor for 401 errors after revocation

Step 4: Request Data Protection

// Scrub PII before sending to Cohere API
const PII_PATTERNS: [string, RegExp][] = [
  ['email', /[a-zA-Z0-9._%+-]+@[a-zA-Z0-9.-]+\.[a-zA-Z]{2,}/g],
  ['phone', /\b\d{3}[-.]?\d{3}[-.]?\d{4}\b/g],
  ['ssn', /\b\d{3}-\d{2}-\d{4}\b/g],
];

function scrubPII(text: string): string {
  let scrubbed = text;
  for (const [type, regex] of PII_PATTERNS) {
    scrubbed = scrubbed.replace(regex, `[REDACTED_${type.toUpperCase()}]`);
  }
  return scrubbed;
}

// Use before API calls when handling user data
async function safeCohereChat(userInput: string) {
  const sanitized = scrubPII(userInput);

  return cohere.chat({
    model: 'command-a-03-2025',
    messages: [{ role: 'user', content: sanitized }],
    safetyMode: 'CONTEXTUAL', // CONTEXTUAL (default), STRICT, or OFF
  });
}

Step 5: Logging Safety

import { CohereError } from 'cohere-ai';

function safeLog(message: string, data?: Record<string, unknown>) {
  const sanitized = { ...data };

  // Never log API keys
  delete sanitized.apiKey;
  delete sanitized.token;
  delete sanitized.authorization;

  // Truncate request/response bodies
  if (typeof sanitized.body === 'string' && (sanitized.body as string).length > 500) {
    sanitized.body = (sanitized.body as string).slice(0, 500) + '...[truncated]';
  }

  console.log(`[cohere] ${message}`, sanitized);
}

// Wrap error logging
function logCohereError(err: unknown) {
  if (err instanceof CohereError) {
    safeLog('API error', {
      status: err.statusCode,
      message: err.message,
      // Do NOT log err.body — may contain sensitive request data
    });
  }
}

Step 6: Safety Modes

Cohere's Chat API supports safety modes that control content filtering:

// CONTEXTUAL (default): Adapts based on context
await cohere.chat({
  model: 'command-a-03-2025',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: prompt }],
  safetyMode: 'CONTEXTUAL',
});

// STRICT: Maximum safety filtering
await cohere.chat({
  model: 'command-a-03-2025',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: prompt }],
  safetyMode: 'STRICT',
});

// Note: safetyMode not configurable with tools or documents params

Security Checklist

• CO_API_KEY stored in environment variables, never in code
• .env files listed in .gitignore
• Separate keys for development and production
• Key rotation scheduled (quarterly recommended)
• PII scrubbed from inputs sent to Cohere
• API keys excluded from all log output
• Production key has billing alerts configured
• Git pre-commit hook scans for leaked keys

Git Pre-Commit Hook

#!/bin/bash
# .git/hooks/pre-commit — detect Cohere keys in staged files
if git diff --cached --diff-filter=ACM | grep -qiE 'CO_API_KEY|cohere.*key.*=.*[a-zA-Z0-9]{20}'; then
  echo "ERROR: Possible Cohere API key in commit. Remove before committing."
  exit 1
fi

Error Handling

Output

Maintain a security-control record with scoped key references, effective model access, secret-scan and log-redaction evidence, safety/budget guardrails, rotation owner, and incident path. It must never contain a live key, complete prompt, retrieved document, embedding, or raw user data.

Examples

Rotate a staging key through the secret manager, verify the service uses the new reference and rejects the revoked key, then confirm pre-commit scanning blocks a synthetic key pattern. If a real key appears in history or logs, revoke/contain it and validate the corrected controls before reopening traffic.

Resources

• Cohere API Keys Dashboard
• Cohere Safety Modes
• Cohere Rate Limits

Next Steps

For production deployment, see cohere-prod-checklist.