PowerShell include SecureString in request header

Using PowerShell to retrieve an auth token for a set of APIs. The endpoint requires several headers, including a "secret", "id1", and "id2" among others.

• This auth token endpoint uses no explicit authentication method (i.e. Basic|Bearer|OAuth).
• The secret should be kept secret as any other password would be handled.
• Ideally, the script remains compatible with PowerShell-5.1, or 6, but it's not a requirement should there be no other way.

How to include the secret in the header as SecureString, or other such format that similarly protects it?

Code works when $secret is a plain old String type.

function Invoke-RestCall
{
    param
    (
        [Guid]$id1,
        [string]$id2
        [Security.SecureString]$clientSecret,
        #... other parameters for other headers
    )

    $uri = "https://..." #uri removed for public SO posting

    $headers = @{}
    $headers.Add("X-Id1", $id1)
    $headers.Add("X-Id2", $id2)
    $headers.Add("X-Secret", $clientSecret) # <-- how to convert from secure format?
    # other headers go here
    $response = Invoke-RestMethod -Uri $uri -Method GET -Headers $headers
    $response | ConvertTo-Json
}

A simple attempt at converting the secret to an encrypted string, such as

$headers.Add("X-Secret", (ConvertFrom-SecureString -Key $secret))

causes the call to return 400 Bad Request.

SecureString seems to be the most intuitive type to use. It's been a while since I worked with PowerShell so I'm not familiar with all the options. PSCredential and NetworkCredential seems like overkill but I'm still learning how to properly use them.

Here is how you can structure your function so that the secret is passed as plain text, you can either use [System.Net.NetworkCredential]::new('', $clientSecret).Password if you're on Windows PowerShell 5.1 or if you have PowerShell 7+ you can also use $clientSecret | ConvertFrom-SecureString -AsPlainText.

Ideally, if your API supports more robust authentication methods you shouldn't use this one, but that's up to the API.

function Invoke-RestCall {
    param (
        [Guid] $id1,
        [string] $id2,
        [securestring] $clientSecret,
        [uri] $uri = "https://...",
        [Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.WebRequestMethod] $Method = 'GET'
        #... other parameters for other headers
    )

    $requestParams = @{
        Method  = $Method
        Uri     = $uri
        Headers = @{
            "X-Id1"    = $id1
            "X-Id2"    = $id2
            "X-Secret" = [System.Net.NetworkCredential]::new('', $clientSecret).Password
        }
    }

    Invoke-RestMethod @requestParams | ConvertTo-Json
}