IAC drift detection for temporary production access
The build was clean. The tests passed. But the deployment was no longer what the code said it should be.
IAC drift detection is the only way to prove your infrastructure matches your Infrastructure as Code. Drift happens when real production changes are made outside your IaC pipeline. Temporary production access—admin into the cloud console for a quick fix, debug, or hot patch—is the fastest path to drift. The change works, but IaC is now out of sync.
When drift goes undetected, automation breaks. Pipelines fail on apply. Terraform state is wrong. Security controls drift too, opening silent risk. Tracking drift is not just housekeeping—it is critical for reliable deployments.
The most common pattern:
- Engineer gets temporary production access for an urgent issue.
- Fix is applied directly in AWS, GCP, or Azure.
- IaC repo remains unchanged.
- Days later, pipeline overwrites or conflicts with live config.
Drift detection catches this by scanning live cloud resources against declared IaC state. Run it after every change in production, especially after granting temporary access. Integrate alerts so any out-of-band change triggers immediate investigation. Link detection with audit logs to see who, when, and why the drift was introduced.
A robust workflow:
- Automate scheduled drift detection scans.
- Enforce pull requests for IaC updates after temporary production access.
- Reconcile live resources with code before the next deploy.
- Keep detection feeds in your CI/CD to block drifted state from pushing forward.
On cloud teams with fast-moving workloads, IAC drift detection for temporary production access is not optional. It is the single signal that your infrastructure is still what your code says it is. Without it, production becomes a shadow system—unknown, unverified, unstable.
You can see this process live in minutes. Try it now at hoop.dev and watch drift detection eliminate blind spots in your IaC workflow.