Are there any potential pitfalls when using HTTP authorized requests in PHP?

When using HTTP authorized requests in PHP, one potential pitfall is the risk of exposing sensitive information if the authorization credentials are not securely stored or transmitted. To mitigate this risk, it is important to use secure methods for storing and transmitting authorization credentials, such as using HTTPS for secure communication and storing credentials securely in environment variables or configuration files.

// Example of securely storing authorization credentials in environment variables
$api_key = getenv('API_KEY');

// Example of sending an authorized request using cURL with HTTPS
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, 'https://api.example.com/data');
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array(
    'Authorization: Bearer ' . $api_key
));
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);

// Handle the response data
echo $response;