What is Infrastructure as Code IaC Security?
Infrastructure as Code IaC Security Definition: Ensuring secure configuration and governance of infrastructure managed through code, such as scripts or templates.
Understanding Infrastructure as Code IaC Security
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security addresses the unique risks that emerge when infrastructure deployment becomes programmable through tools like Terraform, CloudFormation, or Ansible. While IaC brings tremendous benefits in consistency and scalability, it also means that a single misconfiguration in code can result in hundreds of vulnerable cloud resources being deployed automatically. Securing IaC requires shifting security left—identifying and remediating issues in infrastructure definitions before deployment rather than detecting them in running environments. This approach typically combines static analysis of IaC templates to find misconfigurations, compliance verification against security standards, and secure design patterns for common infrastructure components. Organizations implement these checks in development environments and CI/CD pipelines to prevent insecure configurations from reaching production. Effective IaC security requires collaboration between security and infrastructure teams to develop shared understanding of risks and appropriate controls. When implemented well, it dramatically reduces cloud security issues by ensuring infrastructure is secure by design rather than requiring post-deployment remediation.