IaC scanning is the automated analysis of infrastructure as code files, such as Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation or Kubernetes manifests, to find misconfigurations, security risks and policy violations. Scanners read the code without deploying it and report each finding with its location and severity.
Scanners run in three places: the editor for instant feedback, pre-commit hooks, and CI/CD pipelines. In CI/CD, results can fail the build so risky code isn’t merged.
Scanning on its own reports problems. Governance decides what happens next: which rules block a merge, who can approve an exception, and how results are recorded. Steampunk Spotter checks Ansible and Terraform code as a policy gate, not just a report.
Common IaC scanning tools include Steampunk Spotter for Ansible and Terraform, which pairs scanning with policy enforcement, CIS benchmark checks and upgrade compatibility checks. Open source options include Checkov, KICS and Trivy for multi-framework scanning, ansible-lint for Ansible style and correctness, and TFLint for Terraform.
