Infrastructure as Code Vendor Risk Management: Best Practices for Modern Teams

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) simplifies how teams provision, configure, and manage infrastructure. But when you introduce third-party IaC tools or vendors into your environment, a new layer of complexity emerges—vendor risk management. The stakes are high, as poorly managed vendor risks can lead to security risks, compliance violations, misalignments with SLAs, or even downtime.

This blog post outlines a focused strategy for identifying, assessing, and managing risks tied to IaC vendors.

Why You Need an IaC-Specific Vendor Risk Policy

Not all general vendor assessments are sufficient when working with IaC tools. Unlike a SaaS dashboard or library for business processes, IaC tools intimately interact with infrastructure—often with elevated permissions. This direct control over environments introduces unique risks:

Key Concerns Specific to IaC Vendor Management:

• Access to Sensitive Systems: Analyze how vendors store/touch runtime credentials supply-chains or transit values. Are injected integrations insecure?
• Eventual Misconfigurations

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