If nobody owns security, scan your infrastructure code in pull requests, fix only a short list of high-impact misconfigurations first, and protect your state files and secrets. Choose a scanner that runs in CI, explains each finding in plain words and lets you suppress with a reason. Expect gaps, because code scanning cannot see what was changed by hand.
What does IaC scanning catch?
Infrastructure as code scanning reads your templates before they are applied and flags risky settings: storage open to the public, network rules open to the world, databases without encryption, overly broad permissions, missing logging. Because it reads files, it can run on a pull request in seconds, long before anything is deployed.
For a startup, that timing is the benefit. Fixing a line in a template costs a minute. Fixing a public bucket after customer data lands in it costs far more.
Why do state files and secrets deserve their own attention?
Scanners mostly read configuration. Two other risks sit next to it.
First, secrets. HashiCorp's Terraform documentation says that if you add secret values directly to your configuration, Terraform stores those secrets in its state and plan files. Local state is a plaintext file that includes any secret values you defined. The documentation tells you to treat state as sensitive data, keep it out of Git, and consider remote state storage with encryption at rest. It also describes marking variables and outputs as sensitive to redact them from output, and ephemeral values that Terraform omits from state and plan files. Those require newer Terraform versions, so check what you run.
Second, hardcoded credentials in the repository itself. Pair infrastructure scanning with secret scanning, and use short-lived credentials for pipelines.
Which findings should you fix first?
Resist the urge to turn on every rule. A first pass with hundreds of findings gets ignored. Pick a short list, then expand as the team builds the habit.
- Anything that makes data publicly readable or writable.
- Network rules that open administrative ports to the whole internet.
- Missing encryption on data stores that hold customer data.
- Broad permissions given to roles that do not need them.
- Secrets in code or state.
The CIS Benchmarks, consensus configuration guidance covering more than 25 vendor product families including cloud providers, are a good reference when a finding needs a second opinion.
How should a team with no security staff choose a scanner?
Use these criteria, whatever category of tool you look at.
- Runs where developers work. Pull request and CI integration, with results as comments.
- Clear explanations. Each finding says what is wrong, why it matters and the line to change.
- Sensible defaults. A small starter policy that you can grow, not hundreds of rules on day one.
- Suppression with a reason. You can accept a risk in code, with a note and an owner.
- Covers your stack. Check support for your template languages and cloud accounts.
- Fast. If it takes ten minutes, people will route around it.
- Low maintenance. Rules update without you tracking them.
- Honest reporting. The vendor says what it cannot check.
What will it miss?
- Drift. Someone changes a setting in the console, and the code no longer matches reality.
- Runtime behavior. A template can be correct and the application still unsafe.
- Business context. A rule cannot know that a bucket is meant to be public for a website.
- Pipeline permissions. The account that applies your templates is itself a high-value target.
Plan a periodic check of live cloud configuration against your code, even a monthly one.
What to do
- Pick one repository with infrastructure code and run a scanner in a pull request, report-only.
- Choose five rules from the first-fix list and make them blocking.
- Move state to an encrypted remote backend and keep state and plan files out of Git.
- Mark sensitive variables and outputs, and move secrets into a secrets manager.
- Add secret scanning to the same pipeline.
- Give the pipeline role the narrowest permissions that work.
- Review live configuration against the code monthly, and record who accepted each exception.
- Add rules gradually, one theme per month.
Quick check
Is IaC scanning enough to secure my cloud account?
No. It checks code before deployment. You also need protected state, secret handling, least-privilege access and a way to detect changes made outside the code.
Why shouldn't I commit Terraform state to Git?
Per HashiCorp's documentation, state and plan files can contain sensitive values such as initial database passwords or API tokens, and local state is stored in plaintext. Treat it as sensitive data.
Sources
- HashiCorp Developer, Manage sensitive data in your configuration
- Center for Internet Security, CIS Benchmarks
Last reviewed: 18 October 2026.
