Infrastructure as Code assessment with Terraform

Security is of utmost importance for any piece of code or infrastructure

The traditional security approach was based on a ticketing system to provision a piece of infrastructure. This method worked well in smaller settings where companies managed small infrastructures with minimum turnover. This was true in the case of private data centers managing VMs for years, where there was relatively limited scale of deployment and manual scaling and administrating of these systems.

Now as we are transition to cloud environments, there are few key changes to handling of deployment.

1. It is for the most part API driven.
2. There is much higher adaptation and scale of infrastructure with many smaller instances to provision and maintain.

The DevOps approach to software delivery and development calls for very close collaboration between development and operations teams. Achieving faster release cycles can get new applications and new features to end customers quickly and reliably.

The core requirement for the DevOps projects is for programmers and QA engineers to have on demand access to development environments and test beds that closely mirror the latest production environment. A truly production-ready code is created and verified at various stages of development and testing. It’s this “infrastructure on demand” requirement that holds back many organizations from adopting the DevOps model.

Now that we have discussed the process let’s get to – The solution

CloudGuard protects across AWS, Azure, GCP and more with continuous security and compliance for your cloud environments. Now that same security can be integrated into CI/CD pipelines with Infrastructure as Code Security Capability for DevSecOps. Shifting Cloud security left into your CI/CD pipeline stops misconfigurations and policy violations from ever occurring. Instead of being forced to fix post production, developers are notified of issues immediately.

With Iac security, API calls from the CI/CD pipeline tool insert CloudGuard ShiftLeft to scan the Iac template. CloudGuard analyzes the template for misconfigurations and policy violations. If the template connects to existing cloud resources, CloudGuard combines the analysis with any existing violations for a more complete risk understanding. The result are quickly returned via API with customizable enforcement levels of Pass/Fail.

CloudGuard ShiftLeft can be used effectively as a tool to define, provision, and manage the resources needed, without needing the IT staff.

The CloudGuard Terraform rulesets, based on various compliance frameworks, are applied to infrastructure-as-code plans. The plans are evaluated for compliance before being created and deployed in cloud accounts. Misconfigurations and other compliance issues are eliminated at source.

The list of security risks for infrastructure as code platforms are extensive and include network exposure, configuration drifts, and ghost resources. These risks must be taken into account as part of development and testing lifecycles. Iac scanning removes barriers for security by improving efficiency in software development, configurations, and speed.

To learn more about this integration and how you can better secure your cloud, watch this video today and then schedule a demo for a free assessment.

To learn more about this and other developer tools offered by Check Point, please visit developer.checkpoint.com.