The screen flashes red. Your infrastructure no longer matches the code you committed. This is drift. You didn’t plan it, you didn’t approve it, but it’s live now. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) promises consistency. Drift detection ensures that promise holds.
IaC Drift Detection finds configuration changes made outside your version-controlled definitions. These can happen through manual edits in the cloud console, ad hoc scripts, or external automation. In production, drift undermines reliability, security, and compliance.
RASP—Runtime Application Self-Protection—operates differently. It sits inside the runtime, monitoring and blocking malicious activity from within. For IaC drift detection, RASP-like approaches mean the detection layer is not bolted on. It runs as part of the system, aware of the full runtime context, capable of recognizing unauthorized changes before they become incidents.
Traditional IaC tools find drift by comparing saved templates to live resources at scheduled intervals. This can miss short-lived changes and gives delayed alerts. A RASP-enabled IaC drift detection system works in real time. It sees updates as they happen and can trigger immediate action—alerting, rolling back, or quarantining resources.