Cloud configurations can change and change often. Introducing new technologies, releasing new features and supporting new business requirements entail a constant flow of configuration changes in web application development.

However, drift occurs regardless of how well-designed your IaC implementation is. The term “drift” is used to denote a state in which the actual state of your infrastructure deviates from the configuration.

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This article examines cloud drift detection, why it occurs and how to remediate it.

Understanding the Problem

Cloud configurations are prone to change and can change frequently. Businesses often use infrastructure-as-code (IaC) to manage cloud provisioning changes. IaC makes it easier and more reliable for organizations to manage and facilitate changes to the cloud deployment process.

However, inconsistencies in your IaC deployment process can lead to uncertainty about how and where your resources are provisioned, controlled and protected, resulting in lower productivity. No matter how robust your IaC implementation, drift can creep in.

Changes to infrastructure that are made independently of the code responsible for provisioning can lead to considerable drift, and if not adequately monitored, can lead to significant security concerns.

What is Drift?

In the context of infrastructure and application management, drift refers to the system state in which the actual configuration and state of the system deviate from the intended or expected configuration and state.

Drift can be caused by software updates, manual changes and incorrect configurations. Drift management is an essential aspect of infrastructure and application management. By detecting and correcting drift, organizations can ensure that their systems remain stable, secure and compliant with their policies and industry standards.

Configuration Drift: Definition, Causes and Examples

Configuration drift can creep in over time despite consistently building and configuring your servers. It refers to the state of the system when configuration changes are not in sync with the value previously set.

For example, configuration drift can occur when you are yet to document the changes made to the production environment. This results in the production and staging environments getting out of sync.

Some of the other causes of configuration drift are configuration changes because of applying patches and updating network equipment, the addition of new resources to the network and lack of clarity about the desired state of the system.

You can leverage configuration drift management tools such as Netwrix and Aqua to detect configuration drift.

Infrastructure Drift: Definition, Causes and Examples

Infrastructure drift refers to a phenomenon in which the actual state of the infrastructure differs from its desired state because the defined configuration, settings or properties of the infrastructure and the actual state of the provisioned resources differ.

Infrastructure drift may result from manual changes, updates outside of configuration management processes, conflicting IaC code, changes in network configurations, changes due to security settings and configuration differences during system upgrades and maintenance.

To detect infrastructure drift, you can take advantage of infrastructure drift detection tools such as Terraform, CloudQuery and driftctl.

Infrastructure Drift and Configuration Drift: How do they compare?

Both configuration and infrastructure drift can lead to security vulnerabilities, compliance issues and operational challenges. Although infrastructure drift and configuration drift are related, they aren’t the same.

Infrastructure drift refers to inconsistencies or discrepancies between the intended or desired state of the infrastructure and the actual state of the resources provided. Configuration drift refers to inconsistencies or discrepancies between the current configuration of a component or system and the intended or desired configuration.

Infrastructure drift encompasses everything from physical components to virtual components to networks, storage and computing resources. Configuration drift, on the other hand, focuses on individual components or systems within the infrastructure and their configuration settings.

What is Drift Detection?

Drift detection in the context of cloud infrastructures typically compares the actual state of resources deployed in the cloud environment with the defined state described in IaC templates.

Typically, this is automated by tools, scripts or services that analyze and compare configurations, resource states or event logs. These tools are adept at issuing notifications or alerts when discrepancies are detected.

By detecting discrepancies, organizations can identify and resolve inconsistencies, security vulnerabilities and compliance violations. Consequently, the risks related to security breaches are reduced and remediation actions become easier to implement.

Why Policy-as-Code for Cloud Drift Detection?

Policy-as-code provides several benefits when used for cloud drift detection:

• Early detection of drift: Policy-as-code helps detect drift early detection by comparing the current state of the cloud environment with the desired state defined in the policies. This helps identify problems and solve issues before they escalate to a catastrophic level.
• Automated enforcement: Policy-as-code enables automated enforcement of policies, ensuring that the cloud environment complies with the defined rules and requirements. This helps reduce the potential risks associated with human errors.
• Faster remediation: Policy-as-code enables faster remediation by automatically detecting drift and taking the necessary remediation actions such as rolling back changes, updating configurations or notifying relevant teams. This facilitates faster response times and reduces the risks associated with security breaches and downtime.
• Enforce best practices, policies and guidelines: With policy-as-code, best practices, policies and security guidelines can be implemented automatically, reducing security and compliance risks.

Steps for Drift Detection Using Policy-as-Code

Here are the steps that you need to follow to detect and fix drift in your infrastructure:

1. Define your policies: You should first define the policies that should be used to describe the desired state or the baseline of your cloud environment and cover security and compliance aspects of your cloud environment.
2. Codify and deploy policies: Then these policies should be codified and stored in the version control system. The next step should be to deploy the policies to your cloud environment using a policy engine.
3. Identify configuration changes: Once your policies have been deployed, the next step should be to identify any new resources that may introduce risks and compare them to the baseline you’ve defined.
4. Evaluate and remediate: You should evaluate the state of the environment against the defined policies to detect any drift. As soon as any drift is detected, you should take corrective actions to remediate the issues by rolling back changes, updating configurations or notifying the relevant team members.
5. Review policies: To ensure that the policies are up-to-date and relevant, it is imperative that you review them often and make changes to policies as needed.
6. Update and deploy: The last step should be to update the code files and then deploy the solution yet again.

Build a Successful Drift Detection Strategy

Maintaining your infrastructure at the desired state, ensuring compliance and mitigating risks associated with configuration drifts requires a successful drift detection strategy. Here are key strategies you can adopt to build a successful drift detection strategy.

Understand When Drift Becomes a Risk

Drift can profoundly impact a system’s stability, security and compliance. When your server configuration deviates from its intended configuration, it might stop working or become vulnerable to security threats.

Most importantly, this might be a significant threat to security if you don’t have proper monitoring in place. To prevent infrastructure drift and update your security tools, it is important to evaluate and communicate your adoption of IaC.

Detecting Drift: Detecting drift Between IaC and the Cloud

To mitigate the risks associated with drift, configurations that have been changed in real-time must be identified and reset. You can achieve this programmatically and continuously by comparing configuration changes between IaaS and IaC. Programmatically identifying the configuration changes, i.e., detecting the changes to the configuration using code, is the best strategy to reduce drift-related risks.

From Drift Detection to Drift Remediation: Responding to drift

By detecting drift, you’ve won half the battle–you should now devise strategies to remediate it. By keeping an eye on configuration drift and responding to it promptly, you ensure the consistency and reliability of your infrastructure, minimize security risks and keep your system in a consistent state.

Figure 1: Detect and Remediate Drift in the Cloud

It’s important to have effective configuration drift response procedures in place to ensure the stability and security of your environment and also keep it effective for change management and control. You can respond to drift in the following ways:

• Develop mechanisms to detect and report configuration drift
• Understand the underlying causes of drift
• Documenting the drift, including affected resources, configuration deviations and impacts
• Resolve the configuration drift and return the system to the desired state
• Following change management processes and obtaining approvals prior to implementing changes
• Monitor the system to ensure drift has been resolved and the configuration remains stable

Key Strategies for Detecting Drifts Between IaC and the Cloud

There are a few strategies that can be adopted for detecting drift.

Detect Configuration Changes That may Introduce Risks

To identify configuration changes that can introduce risks, you should monitor and analyze changes proactively. Here are some of the key strategies to do so:

• Create a baseline configuration for your system.
• Review the system logs regularly for any suspicious or unexpected configuration changes.
• To capture detailed information about configuration changes, comprehensive logging is helpful.
• Implement a change management process for managing configuration changes.
• Take advantage of automated configuration management tools such as Chef, Puppet, Ansible, etc.
• Leverage threat intelligence to ensure that you are always up to speed on the most recent vulnerabilities, security threats and attack trends.
• Conduct training to increase awareness about configuration changes’ potential consequences and risks.

Establish Baselines and Safely Auto-Remediate Drift

Establishing baselines and safely auto-remediating drift involves setting a reference point for the desired state of your infrastructure and automatically adjusting any detected drift back into compliance with the baseline.

You can maintain the desired state of your infrastructure, reduce manual effort and quickly resolve configuration drift by establishing baselines and implementing security processes for automatic remediation.

This minimizes the impact of drift on your systems while improving your environment’s security, compliance and stability.

Track all Configuration Changes in Your Cloud Environment

Tracking all configuration changes to your cloud environment is critical to maintaining visibility, accountability and security. It can help you improve visibility, detect unauthorized or unintended changes and maintain compliance and accountability.

This way, you can proactively manage your cloud infrastructure, identify potential security risks and ensure its integrity and stability.

Below are the key strategies for tracking cloud configuration changes at a glance:

• Ensure detailed logging for all cloud components, including infrastructure, applications and security
• Track API calls and activities within your cloud environment with cloud monitoring and auditing
• Set up alerts and notifications for critical deviations from established baselines
• Implement configuration changes through formal change management processes
• Manage cloud configuration with tools such as AWS Config and Azure Automation

Managing Drift in Production

To effectively manage drift in production, it is crucial to consistently observe the configuration and state of production systems, keeping them in line with the policies that outline the desired state.

Here are a few guidelines to help you reduce production drift:

• Specify the required state: Define the intended state of the production environment as a set of policies using declarative compliance tools.
• Monitor continuously: To determine any deviations, use a monitoring tool to monitor the production environment or compare the system’s present state to the desired state to identify any deviations.
• Identify the root cause: If drift is detected, it is crucial to identify its root cause. You can do this by examining the logs, analyzing system performance or observing the configuration alterations over time.
• Rectify the drift: After determining the issue’s root, you should address it to align its compliance with the intended state. To do this, you may need to examine logs, examine configuration changes, and analyze system performance.
• Automate the remediation process: To ensure that drift is automatically and quickly rectified, you should automate the remediation process. To achieve this, you can leverage a declarative compliance tool that can help you automatically implement the changes to bring the system back into conformity with the intended state.
• Review and update policies: You should review and revise your policies to ensure they are still relevant and useful and stay updated. To achieve this, you may need to adjust the policies to reflect new compliance requirements or shift your business requirements.

Summary

By identifying drift in cloud environments, organizations can use policy-as-code to ensure that their cloud infrastructure is safe, compliant and secure. In this way, they can ensure compliance with industry best practices, regulatory standards and internal policies. This reduces the risks associated with configuration deviations and enables enterprises to maintain a secure and reliable cloud environment.