Implementing Infrastructure as Code Security Scanning

When to Use

• When provisioning cloud infrastructure with Terraform, CloudFormation, or Pulumi and needing automated security validation
• When compliance frameworks require evidence of infrastructure configuration review before deployment
• When preventing common cloud misconfigurations like public S3 buckets, open security groups, or unencrypted storage
• When establishing guardrails that block insecure infrastructure changes in pull requests
• When managing multi-cloud environments requiring consistent security policies across AWS, Azure, and GCP

Do not use for scanning application source code (use SAST), for monitoring already-deployed infrastructure drift (use cloud security posture management tools), or for container image vulnerability scanning (use Trivy).

Prerequisites

• Checkov v3.x installed (pip install checkov) or tfsec installed
• Terraform, CloudFormation, or Kubernetes IaC files in the repository
• CI/CD pipeline with access to IaC directories
• Bridgecrew API key (optional, for Checkov platform integration)