Shifting Left in Infrastructure Security for Cloud-Native Teams

Shifting left in infrastructure security means adding security considerations directly into your design and development workflows, rather than deferring them to the deployment and production phases. This helps you embed security validation throughout your infrastructure as code (IaC) development lifecycle, rather than treating security as a final checkpoint.

Shift-left infrastructure security integrates security validation directly into your development lifecycle:

• Security analysis is performed on infrastructure code as it is written.
• Policies are automatically enforced during code commits.
• Compliance checks are integrated with functional tests in the CI/CD pipeline or orchestration platform.

This approach differs significantly from the application security shift left. Whereas application security focuses on code vulnerabilities and dependency scanning, infrastructure security addresses configuration drift, policy compliance, access controls, and resource provisioning standards.

Traditional infrastructure security follows a linear progression: Design → Develop → Deploy → Secure → Monitor. Security evaluation happens after infrastructure deployment, creating a gap between implementation and validation.

Shift-left infrastructure security transforms this timeline into an integrated workflow:

1. Design phase: Security policies and constraints inform infrastructure architecture decisions.
2. Development phase: Real-time security feedback guides IaC template creation.
3. Build phase: Automated security scanning validates configurations before deployment.
4. Deploy phase: Policy enforcement ensures only compliant infrastructure reaches production.
5. Runtime phase: Continuous monitoring detects drift and triggers automated remediation.

Each phase includes security touchpoints that provide immediate feedback without disrupting development velocity. You catch misconfigurations during template creation rather than after resource provisioning.

Cloud-native environments amplify the impact of late-stage security discoveries. When a security issue is identified in production infrastructure, remediation often requires resource recreation and data migration, which often results in downtime. 

The cost of fixing a misconfigured security group after deployment can be 10-100 times higher than the cost of preventing the misconfiguration during development.

Compliance requirements further emphasize the need for proactive security integration. Regulations like SOC 2, PCI DSS, and GDPR demand continuous security controls and audit trails. Retroactive compliance efforts are costly, time-consuming, and often incomplete.

Early security integration also addresses the velocity demands of modern infrastructure teams. 

When security validation happens during development, you eliminate the waiting periods that traditionally slow infrastructure deployment. Teams can maintain high deployment frequency while improving security posture.

Today, the most common infrastructure security pain points include visibility gaps, misconfigurations, and inconsistent policy enforcement. Improving observability, automating baseline security controls, and unifying policy enforcement across environments can significantly reduce exposure.

1. Visibility gaps in IaC workflows

Most infrastructure teams operate with limited visibility into their security posture across environments. You might know that your production environment meets security standards, but you might lack real-time insight into development and staging environments where misconfigurations often originate.

Traditional security tools focus on production monitoring, leaving blind spots in your infrastructure development lifecycle:

• You can’t see when developers create overly permissive IAM policies in development environments. 
• You lack visibility into configuration drift between environments. 
• You don’t have early warning systems for compliance violations during infrastructure changes. 
• And so much more.

This visibility gap creates a reactive security model, in which issues surface during audits, penetration tests, or security incidents rather than during normal development workflows. 

By the time you identify problems, they’ve often propagated across multiple environments and become expensive to remediate. You usually remediate them fast and manually, leaving a lot of room for configuration drift.

2. Governance and control challenges

Scaling infrastructure teams encounter consistent governance challenges. Different teams implement security controls differently, creating inconsistent security postures across projects. 

Manual approval processes create deployment bottlenecks that undermine development velocity. Security policies exist in documentation rather than enforceable code, leading to many different issues.

Traditional governance approaches don’t scale with cloud-native infrastructure demands:

• Manual security reviews can’t keep pace with infrastructure changes measured in hundreds of deployments per day. 
• Static security policies can’t adapt to dynamic infrastructure requirements. 
• Centralized security teams become bottlenecks when they must approve every infrastructure change.

These governance gaps create both security risks and operational friction. Teams work around security processes to maintain velocity, inadvertently introducing vulnerabilities. 

Security requirements are interpreted inconsistently across teams, and compliance becomes a periodic exercise rather than a continuous process.

3. Traditional tool limitations

Many infrastructure teams struggle with adapting application-focused CI/CD tools for infrastructure security. Tools designed for application code don’t understand infrastructure-specific security concerns like resource permissions, network configurations, or compliance policies.

Security scanning often happens as an afterthought in CI/CD pipelines. Teams add security checks after establishing functional testing, creating a secondary security workflow that’s easy to bypass or ignore. When security scans fail, teams face pressure to override security controls to maintain deployment schedules.

Alert fatigue compounds these tool limitations. 

Poorly configured security tools generate numerous false positives, training teams to ignore security notifications. Critical security issues get buried in the noise from low-priority configuration warnings. Teams spend more time managing security tool output than addressing actual security vulnerabilities.

That’s why an infrastructure orchestration product such as Spacelift makes sense: It understands all your infrastructure necessities.

4. The collaboration breakdown

Infrastructure security often suffers from organizational silos: 

• Security teams define policies in isolation from infrastructure teams, who must implement them. 
• Infrastructure teams make architectural decisions without early security input. 

This separation creates friction when security requirements conflict with infrastructure designs.

Late-stage security requirements frequently force infrastructure rework. Security teams identify issues during pre-deployment reviews, requiring significant changes to infrastructure templates. These changes can impact functionality, performance, or cost, creating tension between security and infrastructure teams.

Knowledge silos prevent effective security implementation. Infrastructure teams lack deep security expertise to evaluate complex policy decisions, and security teams lack infrastructure context to understand the operational impact of security requirements. 

This knowledge gap leads to security policies that are either too restrictive (blocking legitimate infrastructure needs) or too permissive (failing to address actual security risks).

5. Self-service speed vs. control

Platform engineers face a fundamental tension between developer velocity and operational governance. Self-service infrastructure platforms promise rapid deployment capabilities, allowing development teams to provision resources independently without waiting for platform team intervention. 

However, unrestricted self-service often leads to configuration drift, security vulnerabilities, and cost overruns as developers prioritize speed over compliance. 

Implementing guardrails to maintain control typically introduces friction that slows development workflows. Approval processes, policy validation, and compliance checks create bottlenecks that frustrate developers accustomed to cloud-native agility.

The speed-control dilemma intensifies as organizations scale. Platform teams become bottlenecks if they manually review every infrastructure request, yet automated controls often lack the nuance to handle legitimate edge cases.

That’s where an infrastructure orchestration platform such as Spacelift shines. It allows you to build pre-approved templates that encompass all the governance mechanisms, letting developers deploy infrastructure at speed, without overlooking the platform team’s control needs. 

Core components of shift-left infrastructure include:

Policy as code implementation

Policy as code transforms security requirements from documentation into executable code that integrates directly with your infrastructure development workflow. Instead of maintaining security policies in spreadsheets or wikis, you define them in version-controlled code that can be tested, versioned, and automatically enforced.

Use declarative languages to define infrastructure security policies that work with your existing IaC tools. In AWS environments, you can apply AWS Config rules and Service Control Policies to codify security requirements. These policies fit smoothly into CloudFormation and Terraform workflows.

Here’s an example of a security policy defined as code using AWS Config:

This policy automatically evaluates S3 buckets for public access configurations, providing immediate feedback when infrastructure code violates security requirements.

You can integrate policy as code with your Terraform workflows using tools like Open Policy Agent (OPA) and Conftest. This integration enables policy validation during terraform plan operations, catching security issues before resource creation:

By using Spacelift, you get these policies out of the box, with a policy library containing over 60 policies you can import into your account. 

Spacelift policies offer you the following capabilities:

• Restrict certain resources and certain resource types using plan policies.
• Require approvals for runs and tasks using approval policies.
• Define what happens when a PR is open or merged using push policies.
• Control where to send notifications (Slack, MS Teams, any custom webhook) using notification policies.

Automated security scanning in pipelines

Integrate security scanning directly into your CI/CD pipeline to catch vulnerabilities and misconfigurations before deployment. This automated approach provides consistent security validation without manual intervention or workflow disruption.

Tools like Checkov, tfsec, and Prowler provide comprehensive security scanning for infrastructure as code templates. These tools understand cloud-specific security concerns and can identify misconfigurations across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud resources.

You should configure your CI/CD pipeline to run security scans automatically on every infrastructure code change. Here’s an example GitHub Actions workflow that integrates security scanning:

This workflow runs security scanning on every pull request, providing developers with immediate feedback about security issues in their infrastructure code.

Notice that security scanning integrates with GitHub’s security tab, providing centralized visibility into security findings across your infrastructure codebase. This integration enables security teams to monitor security posture without disrupting development workflows.

If you are using Spacelift, there is a simple and even more reusable way of implementing this. You can use a context to define all the commands required to install and run Checkov inside, which can be auto-attached to all of your workflows. You can even customize the run behavior by implementing custom policies based on Checkov’s input.

Infrastructure testing frameworks

Implement comprehensive testing frameworks that include security-focused test cases alongside functional infrastructure tests. This approach ensures that security requirements are validated continuously, not just during initial deployment.

Frameworks like Terratest or OpenTofu/Terraform have built-in test capabilities to create automated tests that validate security configurations in deployed infrastructure. These tests can verify that security groups have appropriate rules, that IAM policies follow least-privilege principles, and that encryption is enabled where required.

When security testing is integrated into your deployment pipeline, it helps catch configuration drift and ensure that the deployed infrastructure matches security expectations. Run these tests automatically after each deployment to detect security regressions early.

Continuous compliance monitoring

Establish continuous monitoring systems that detect security drift and compliance violations in real-time. This monitoring extends beyond initial deployment validation to ensure ongoing security posture maintenance.

AWS Config provides continuous compliance monitoring by evaluating resource configurations against defined rules. Config rules can monitor critical security settings and trigger alerts when configurations drift from compliance standards.

For automated remediation in common compliance violations, set up AWS Config to trigger Lambda functions to automatically remediate simple security issues like unencrypted resources or overly permissive security groups.

Create dashboards that provide real-time visibility into your security posture across all environments. Tools like AWS Security Hub aggregate security findings from multiple sources, providing centralized monitoring of your infrastructure security state.

To implement shift-left security effectively, it’s essential to follow a phased, strategic approach. Each phase builds on the previous one: starting with assessment and ending with advanced automation.

Phase 1: Foundation and assessment (weeks 1- 4)

Start your shift-left security journey by laying a solid foundation. This phase is all about understanding where you currently stand, identifying areas for improvement, and setting measurable goals.

Assess your current security posture

Begin with a full evaluation of your existing tools, processes, and capabilities:

• Inventory your security tools: List all infrastructure security tools currently in use.
• Map out workflows: Document how security validation, approvals, and compliance checks are currently handled.
• Spot the bottlenecks: Identify which parts of the security process are slowing down your deployments.

Evaluate IaC maturity level

Your team’s IaC maturity directly impacts how quickly you can shift security practices left:

• Are you using IaC consistently across environments?
• How experienced is your team with IaC and security tools?
• Do any team members need additional training?

Establish a baseline

Before rolling out new practices, define what “normal” looks like:

• Track how long it currently takes to detect and resolve security issues.
• Measure deployment frequency and lead time.
• These metrics will help you quantify improvements as you move forward.

Look for early automation wins

Quick wins can help build momentum and demonstrate value:

• Identify repetitive or manual security validation tasks.
• Explore automation opportunities that don’t require a major tooling overhaul.
• Add basic security scanners to your CI/CD pipeline for immediate impact.

Phase 2: Core integration (weeks 5 – 12)

In this phase, the focus shifts from assessment to active integration. The goal is to embed security directly into development workflows, making it a natural part of how your teams build and ship software.

Integrate security in CI/CD pipelines

Start integrating security tools into your development lifecycle without disrupting productivity:

• Add automated security scanners to your CI/CD pipelines.
• Use warning-only thresholds initially to avoid breaking builds.
• Gradually increase enforcement as teams gain confidence in handling security feedback.

Make feedback from security tools actionable

Security tools should help developers, not overwhelm them:

• Customize scanning rules to focus on high-impact, environment-specific risks.
• Tune tools to eliminate false positives, which prevents alert fatigue.
• Ensure feedback is clear, actionable, and prioritized so developers know exactly what to fix and why.

Adopt policy as code

Codify security requirements into enforceable policies using code:

• Start with core policies like:
  • Data encryption
  • Identity and access management (IAM)
  • Network segmentation and firewall rules
    
• Implement policies using tools like OPA (Open Policy Agent) or Sentinel.
• Expand coverage over time as teams adapt and governance needs grow.

Automate feedback loops

Make sure security insights reach the right people at the right time:

• Connect scanning tools with code review tools, chat platforms, and project management systems
• Deliver early, automated feedback, ideally at pull request time, so security becomes part of the development rhythm.

Phase 3: Advanced automation (weeks 13 – 24)

With foundational practices in place, it’s time to scale your shift-left strategy with advanced automation. This phase focuses on strengthening security coverage, enabling faster response times, and maintaining consistency across all environments.

Enable continuous compliance monitoring

Keep your infrastructure secure in real-time:

• Detect configuration drift and policy violations as they happen.
• Set up automated alerts for critical issues such as open security groups, disabled encryption, unauthorized privilege changes.
• Define escalation paths based on severity to ensure rapid incident response.

Automate remediation for common issues

Take the load off your teams by resolving predictable risks automatically:

• Begin with low-risk, high-impact actions, like enabling default encryption on storage, closing unused ports, and enforcing tagging policies.
• As trust in automation grows, expand to more complex remediations (e.g., IAM adjustments, resource quarantining).

Orchestrate security across environments

Ensure security isn’t siloed, so you need to ensure a consistent security posture from development through production

• Implement cross-environment policies that adapt to each stage’s needs while enforcing core security controls.
• Use orchestration tools to synchronize security standards across environments.
• Implement security policies that adapt to different environmental requirements while maintaining core security standards

Optimize for speed and scalability

Security shouldn’t slow you down; optimize automation for performance:

• Fine-tune scanning configurations to reduce unnecessary checks.
• Use parallel processing to run security tasks concurrently with other pipeline stages.
• Streamline feedback loops to deliver insights faster without adding noise.

Success metrics and KPIs

To gauge the impact of your shift-left security initiative, focus on metrics that highlight both security improvements and operational efficiency. Choose KPIs that are meaningful to both security and infrastructure teams, and benchmark them against pre-implementation baselines.

Building a robust infrastructure security posture starts with choosing the right tools for each layer of your stack.

Static analysis tools for IaC

Choose static analysis tools that integrate seamlessly with your existing IaC workflows and provide actionable security feedback without overwhelming development teams with false positives.

Here’s a quick comparison of some of the more popular tools:

Consider your specific requirements when selecting security scanning tools: 

• Teams with multicloud infrastructure need tools that support multiple cloud providers. 
• Teams with complex compliance requirements need tools that support custom policy development. 
• Teams prioritizing developer experience need tools with excellent IDE integration and clear remediation guidance.

Runtime security and monitoring

Go beyond static analysis with real-time monitoring to maintain a strong security posture and detect unwanted configuration changes.

AWS Security Hub aggregates security findings from multiple AWS security services and third-party tools, providing centralized security monitoring across your entire AWS environment. It supports custom insights and automated response capabilities through integration with other AWS services.

AWS Config provides continuous compliance monitoring by tracking resource configuration changes and evaluating them against defined compliance rules. It supports custom rules and automated remediation through integration with Lambda functions and Systems Manager.

Consider cloud-native monitoring solutions that integrate with your existing observability stack. Tools like Datadog, Splunk, and New Relic provide infrastructure security monitoring capabilities that complement their application monitoring features.

Implement infrastructure drift detection that identifies when deployed infrastructure deviates from desired configurations. This capability is crucial for maintaining security posture in dynamic cloud environments where configuration changes can introduce vulnerabilities.

Policy management platforms

Select policy management platforms that enable you to define, test, and enforce security policies across your entire infrastructure lifecycle.

Here’s a quick comparison of the options:

Consider policy management platforms that support your deployment model and compliance requirements. Multi-cloud environments benefit from unified policy frameworks that work across different cloud providers. 

Highly regulated industries may require policy management platforms with specific compliance certifications.

Infrastructure orchestration platforms

Infrastructure orchestration platforms such as Spacelift help you with all of the above. By leveraging Spacelift, you can enhance every aspect of your IaC security strategy:

• Policy as code: Built-in OPA integration for fine-grained control
• Self-service workflows: Integrations with ServiceNow, Backstage, and more
• Smart dependencies: Shareable outputs and dependency chaining
• Reusable configs: Define once, use everywhere with Contexts

Adopting shift-left security in infrastructure teams often means rethinking habits, tools, and expectations. The benefits are significant, but cultural inertia, technical debt, and performance concerns can slow progress. Here’s how to tackle common obstacles with practical, low-friction strategies:

Team resistance and cultural change

Implementing shift-left infrastructure security often encounters resistance from teams accustomed to traditional security processes. Address this challenge by focusing on demonstrating value rather than mandating process changes.

Start with voluntary adoption by motivated team members who can become champions for the new approach. Provide comprehensive training that shows how shift-left security improves both security posture and development velocity. Highlight specific pain points that shift-left practices resolve.

Create shared ownership of security outcomes by establishing metrics that benefit both security and infrastructure teams. Track metrics like deployment frequency, security issue resolution time, and compliance audit preparation time to demonstrate mutual benefits.

Implement gradual enforcement rather than immediate full implementation. Begin with warning-level security feedback that doesn’t block deployments, then gradually increase enforcement as teams adapt to security integration. This approach builds confidence while avoiding workflow disruption.

Technical debt and legacy infrastructure

Legacy infrastructure often lacks the automation and standardization necessary for effective shift-left security implementation. Address this challenge through strategic migration planning that balances security improvements with operational stability.

Assess your legacy infrastructure to identify security risks and automation opportunities. Prioritize systems based on security risk, business criticality, and automation feasibility. Focus initial efforts on high-risk, high-automation systems that provide the greatest security improvement.

Implement parallel security validation for legacy systems that can’t be immediately modernized. Use external security scanning tools to evaluate legacy infrastructure configurations and identify security gaps. Gradually migrate legacy systems to Infrastructure as Code as business priorities allow.

Create secure infrastructure templates that teams can use for new systems and legacy system replacements. These templates embed security best practices and provide a migration path for legacy infrastructure that needs to be modernized.

Performance and speed concerns

Teams often worry that security integration will slow down deployment pipelines and reduce development velocity. Address these concerns through optimization strategies that minimize security checking overhead.

Implement parallel security checking that runs simultaneously with functional testing rather than sequentially. This approach reduces total pipeline execution time while providing comprehensive security validation.

Optimize security scanning configurations to focus on high-impact issues and eliminate false positives. Use intelligent scanning strategies that focus on changed files rather than full codebase scanning for incremental security validation.

Configure appropriate failure thresholds that balance security requirements with operational needs. Critical security issues should block deployments, while lower-priority issues should generate warnings that can be addressed in subsequent releases.

Create feedback loops that help teams understand and address security issues quickly. Provide clear remediation guidance, code examples, and documentation that enables rapid security issue resolution.

To ensure your shift-left infrastructure approach delivers real value, it’s essential to measure success across technical performance, compliance, and team dynamics. The goal is not only to meet baseline expectations but to continuously evolve and optimize based on data-driven insights and team feedback.

KPIs

Define comprehensive metrics that reflect the impact of your shift-left implementation across key areas: security, efficiency, and team satisfaction.

• Security improvement: Track vulnerability detection and resolution times — specifically, the duration from vulnerability introduction to detection, and from detection to remediation. A successful shift-left strategy should noticeably reduce both metrics.
• Operational efficiency: Monitor provisioning speed and deployment performance to ensure that integrating security doesn’t slow down development. Watch deployment frequency, lead time, and pipeline execution times before and after implementation. Your goal is to maintain or improve these indicators even with added security layers.
• Compliance readiness: Use automated reporting and continuous monitoring to measure how quickly teams can prepare for audits and how many compliance violations surface during them. Fewer violations and faster prep times are signs of an effective system.
• Team productivity and satisfaction: Gauge developer sentiment with surveys and feedback loops. Look at metrics such as time spent on security tasks, satisfaction with tools, and perceived value. Positive trends here suggest successful cultural adoption and minimal friction.

Continuous improvement strategies

Sustaining success means adapting your approach as your infrastructure, threat landscape, and team evolve.

• Toolchain evolution: Regularly assess your security tools to ensure they remain effective. With constant innovation in this space, there are frequent opportunities to enhance your capabilities.
• Policy refinement: Use operational insights and emerging threat data to revisit your security policies. Fine-tune them to address new risks while minimizing false positives that slow teams down.
• Cross-team collaboration: Strengthen the feedback loop between security and infrastructure teams. Focus on improving communication, shortening response times, and fostering better knowledge sharing.
• Automation expansion: Identify repetitive, low-complexity security tasks that can be automated. Start small with prioritizing high-frequency tasks, and build toward a robust, automated security workflow.

our infrastructure security strategy must account for emerging technologies that will redefine cloud-native security to stay ahead of threats in a rapidly evolving landscape. Rather than reacting after the fact, adapting proactively positions your organization to thrive in the face of change.

AI-powered security analysis and threat detection are set to revolutionize how we approach complex decision-making. These tools will automate what today demands human expertise, uncovering nuanced patterns that traditional rule-based systems overlook. To prepare, ensure your systems collect high-quality security data and maintain rich, detailed logs of security events.

Zero-trust architecture is on track to become the default model for cloud-native environments. This approach eliminates implicit trust and verifies every access request. Embedding zero-trust principles into your policies and monitoring systems from the outset will enable a smoother transition and stronger security posture.

As containers and serverless architectures gain momentum, securing them requires strategies distinct from those used for traditional infrastructure. Their ephemeral and dynamic nature introduces unique challenges. Assess your current tools for compatibility with these technologies to avoid coverage gaps.

The complexity of infrastructure dependencies is making supply chain security more critical than ever. Protect against supply chain attacks by scanning Terraform modules, container images, and all other infrastructure components before deployment.

Preparing for evolving compliance requirements

Meanwhile, the regulatory landscape continues to shift as cloud-native practices evolve. Security implementations must remain agile to meet changing compliance expectations. Stay informed by tracking regulatory developments in your industry and jurisdiction, especially those targeting cloud security and IaC.

Design flexible policy frameworks that can be updated without re-architecting your entire security stack. Embrace policy-as-code practices to streamline policy management, testing, and deployment. 

Finally, support long-term compliance by maintaining thorough audit trails and documentation of infrastructure changes, policy enforcement, and access control, cornerstones for meeting evolving compliance requirements.

Shifting left in infrastructure security transforms reactive security processes into proactive, automated workflows that enhance both security posture and operational efficiency. By integrating security validation throughout your IaC development lifecycle, you eliminate late-stage security bottlenecks while reducing security risks.

The implementation approach outlined in this guide provides a practical pathway for adopting shift-left security practices without disrupting existing workflows or requiring extensive custom engineering. Start with foundation assessment and quick wins, then gradually expand security automation coverage as your team develops expertise and confidence.

Success in shift-left infrastructure security requires commitment to continuous improvement and adaptation. Technology, threats, and compliance requirements will continue to evolve, demanding flexible security approaches that can adapt to changing circumstances while maintaining operational effectiveness.

Begin your shift-left journey by assessing your current security posture and identifying immediate automation opportunities. Implement basic security scanning in your CI/CD pipelines, establish simple policy-as-code frameworks, and create feedback loops that surface security issues early in your development process. Better yet, adopt an infrastructure orchestration platform like Spacelift to help you with all of the above.

For deeper implementation guidance, explore the comprehensive documentation provided by security tool vendors, engage with the DevSecOps community through conferences and online forums, and consider partnering with security consultants who specialize in cloud-native infrastructure security.