Infrastructure as code and your security team: 5 critical investment areas

Couldn't attend Transform 2022? Check out all the summit sessions in our on-demand library now! Look here.

The promises of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) are higher speed and more consistent deployments; two key benefits that drive productivity throughout the software development lifecycle.

Speed ​​is great, but only if security teams are positioned to keep pace with modern development. Historically, outdated practices and processes have held back security, while innovation in software development has developed rapidly, creating an imbalance that needs to be corrected.

IaC isn't just a boon for developers; IaC is a fundamental technology that allows security teams to progress in maturity. Yet many security teams are still looking to take advantage of this modern approach to cloud application development. As IaC adoption continues to increase, security teams must keep up with rapid and frequent changes in cloud architectures; otherwise, IaC can be a risky business.

If your organization is adopting IaC, here are five critical areas to invest in.

MetaBeat 2022

MetaBeat will bring together thought leaders to advise on how metaverse technology will transform the way all industries communicate and do business on October 4 in San Francisco, CA.

The constant suppression of fires from project to project has created a challenge for security teams to find the time and resources to prioritize the creation of foundational security design patterns for cloud and hybrid architectures.

Security design patterns are a necessary foundation for security teams to keep pace with modern development. They help architects and solution developers accelerate independently while having clear guidelines that define the best practices that security wants them to follow. Security teams also gain autonomy and can focus on strategic needs.

IaC offers new opportunities to create and codify these models. Template building is a common approach that many organizations invest in. For common technology use cases, security teams set standards by creating IaC models that meet the organization's security requirements. By engaging early with project teams to identify security requirements upfront, security teams help integrate security and compliance needs to give developers a better starting point to build their IaC. /p>

However, creating templates is not a silver bullet. It can add value for some commonly used cloud resources, but requires investment in security automation to scale.

As your organization evolves in its use of IaC, your cloud architectures become more complex and scale. Your developers are able to quickly adopt new cloud architectures and features, and you'll find that static IaC patterns don't scale to the dynamic needs of modern cloud-native applications.

Every application has different needs, and each application development team will inevitably modify the IaC model to meet the unique needs of that application. The capabilities of cloud service providers change daily and make your IaC security model a depreciating and rapidly obsolete asset. A significant investment in governance at scale is required for security teams, and this creates significant work for your SMBs to manage exceptions.

Automation that relies on security as code provides a solution and allows your resource-constrained security teams to scale. In fact, it may be the only viable approach to addressing cloud native security. This...