Infrastructure as Code Scanning
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scanning is a security and compliance practice that involves analyzing IaC configuration files (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible) to detect misconfigurations, vulnerabilities, and policy violations before deployment. It automates the review of infrastructure definitions to ensure they adhere to security best practices, regulatory standards, and organizational policies. This helps prevent insecure infrastructure from being provisioned in cloud or on-premises environments.
Developers should use IaC scanning to shift security left in the DevOps pipeline, catching issues early when they are cheaper and easier to fix. It is critical for compliance-driven industries (e.g., finance, healthcare) and cloud-native applications to avoid data breaches or downtime from misconfigured resources. Specific use cases include scanning Terraform files for exposed S3 buckets in AWS or Kubernetes manifests for insecure pod configurations.