BOOK A DEMO

#APPLICATION SECURITY TESTING

Infrastructure as Code (IAC)

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is revolutionizing how organizations manage and deploy their IT infrastructure, enabling teams to define and provision infrastructure through code. However, with this automation comes the risk of introducing security vulnerabilities into your infrastructure.

  • What is IAC?
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Security Scanning is a process that analyzes your IaC templates, such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, or Ansible scripts, to detect security vulnerabilities and misconfigurations before they are applied to your cloud environment. Unlike tools that simply help create or manage IaC, Rainforest Technologies focuses on scanning these templates with a security-first approach, ensuring that your infrastructure is resilient against potential threats right from the start.

  • How IAC Works?
IaC Security Scanning operates by thoroughly inspecting your IaC templates to identify potential security issues that could compromise your cloud infrastructure. The process involves several key steps:

Template Parsing

The IaC scanning tool begins by parsing the IaC files to understand the structure and configurations of the resources being defined, such as networks, storage, and compute instances.

Security Rules

It then applies a set of predefined security rules and policies to the parsed template, looking for common misconfigurations and security risks. This includes checks for insecure default settings, improper network configurations, overly permissive access controls, and the use of outdated or vulnerable components.

Contextual Analysis

The tool also performs a contextual analysis, understanding how different parts of the infrastructure interact with each other. This helps in identifying more complex security issues that might arise from interdependencies within the infrastructure.

Reporting Findings

After the analysis, the tool generates a detailed report that outlines the vulnerabilities found, categorizes them by severity, and provides actionable recommendations for remediation.

Continuous Integration (CI)

The IaC scanning tool can be integrated into your CI/CD pipeline, enabling continuous security checks as part of your automated deployment process. This ensures that every change to your infrastructure is scanned for security risks before it’s deployed.

  • Use Case​
IaC Security Scanning is crucial for organizations that manage their infrastructure through code and need to ensure that their cloud environments are secure from the outset. A common use case is during the development phase, where IaC templates are scanned before being applied to production environments. This proactive approach helps prevent security breaches caused by misconfigurations or vulnerabilities in the infrastructure. Additionally, IaC Security Scanning is essential for teams adopting DevSecOps practices, as it allows for continuous security assessments as part of the automated deployment process, ensuring that security is baked into the infrastructure from the ground up.

Book a demo