IaC security is the practice of finding and preventing security problems in infrastructure as code before it’s deployed. It checks templates, Playbooks and plans for misconfigurations, exposed secrets, insecure defaults and vulnerable components, so insecure infrastructure is never created in the first place.
Common IaC security issues include:
- Open network rules, such as security groups allowing 0.0.0.0/0 on admin ports.
- Hardcoded passwords, tokens and keys.
- Disabled encryption or logging on storage and databases.
- Overly broad permissions on IAM roles or service accounts.
- Outdated modules, Collections or providers with known CVEs.
IaC security best practices: check code at commit and in CI/CD, not after deployment; store secrets in a vault; pin module, Collection and provider versions; apply CIS Benchmarks as policy; and block merges on critical findings.
Steampunk Spotter covers IaC security for Ansible and Terraform as part of wider governance. It adds CVE and SBOM analysis, CIS benchmark checks and custom policies, enforced before code reaches the execution platform.
