Reproducible, Secure, and Auditable Environments
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) turns your cloud, network, and platform configuration into versioned, testable code—so every change is repeatable, reviewed, and provable.
SolveForce delivers IaC with pipelines, policies, drift detection, and evidence across AWS/Azure/GCP, Kubernetes, and edge—wired to identity, keys, and security controls.
How IaC fits in the SolveForce model:
☁️ Platform → Cloud • 🧩 Delivery → DevOps / CI-CD
🔒 Security → Cybersecurity • 📊 Evidence/Automation → SIEM / SOAR
🔑 Keys/Secrets → Key Management / HSM • Secrets Management • IAM / SSO / MFA
🖧 Fabric → Networks & Data Centers • 🌐 Connectivity
🎯 Outcomes (Why IaC)
- Reproducible environments — same parameters, same result (dev → prod → DR).
- Faster, safer change — PR review, automated tests, and staged rollouts.
- Drift eliminated — detect & correct manual changes automatically.
- Compliance by default — policies-as-code enforce guardrails pre-merge.
- Audit-grade evidence — every apply is linked to a ticket, approver, plan, and logs.
🧭 Scope (What we codify)
- Cloud resources — accounts/subscriptions, VPC/VNet/VPC peering, subnets, gateways, security groups/NACLs, load balancers, DNS, storage, compute, serverless, data services. → Cloud
- Kubernetes — clusters/nodes, namespaces, network policies, ingress, operators, Helm/chart releases. → Kubernetes
- Security & identity — IAM roles/policies, SSO mappings, key policies, KMS/HSM, WAF/Bot, logging, GuardDuty/Defender/Cloud IDS. → IAM / SSO / MFA • Key Management / HSM • WAF / Bot Management
- Networking & edge — Transit hubs, Direct Connect/ExpressRoute/Interconnect, SD-WAN templates. → Direct Connect • SD-WAN
- Observability — log sinks, metrics, traces, alerting rules, dashboards; exports to SIEM. → SIEM / SOAR
🧱 Building Blocks (Spelled out)
- Declarative engines — Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM/Bicep, Pulumi, CDK; Helm/Kustomize for K8s.
- Pipelines — plan/apply with approvals, canaries, and rollbacks. → DevOps / CI-CD
- Modules — reusable, versioned patterns (VPC, EKS/ECS, WAF, S3 + Object Lock, KMS keys).
- Policies as Code — OPA/Conftest/Sentinel; pre-merge guardrails for tags, regions, encryption, public exposure, required logs.
- Drift detection — scheduled
plan/diffjobs with tickets opened on mismatch. - State & locks — remote state backends (S3+KMS+Object Lock/Azure Blob/GCS) with state locking and versioning.
- Secrets — injected at runtime from vault/KMS; never hard-coded. → Secrets Management
🏗️ Reference Architecture (Plan → Review → Enforce → Apply → Prove)
1) Author & Lint
- Write modules/stacks; run formatters/linters; generate docs & diagrams.
2) Plan & Policy
- CI creates a plan; run policies as code (deny if unencrypted, public, or untagged).
3) Review & Approve
- PR reviewers check plan/output + security diffs; ticket ID required; sign-off gates.
4) Staged Apply
- Canary (dev/sandboxes) → non-prod rings → prod; per-region/environment applies; Observe SLOs.
5) Drift & Reconciliation
- Scheduled
planfinds drift; auto-create tickets and optional auto-reconcile.
6) Evidence & SIEM
- Store plan, apply logs, resource diffs, approvals, and artifact hashes; export to SIEM/SOAR for audits. → SIEM / SOAR
🔒 Security & Governance (Concrete controls)
- Default encrypt everything — at rest (KMS/CMK), in transit (TLS 1.3/mTLS), field-level where policy requires. → Encryption
- Key custody — non-exportable keys, dual-control for key ops, envelope encryption patterns. → Key Management / HSM
- Identity fencing — least-privilege roles, permission boundaries, short-lived credentials; SSO/MFA on pipelines. → IAM / SSO / MFA
- Boundary protection — WAF/Bot, DDoS profiles, private on-ramps; origins cloaked by allowlists. → WAF / Bot Management • DDoS Protection • Direct Connect
- Logging & retention — org-wide logs (CloudTrail/Activity/Audit); WORM where mandated; central exports to SIEM.
- Compliance packs — PCI/HIPAA/ISO/NIST/CMMC mappings embedded in modules.
💰 FinOps by Design
- Tag policies — cost allocation keys enforced at plan time.
- Quotas & budgets — guardrails on SKU/region/instance type; budget alerts by OU/project.
- Right-sizing — modules default to sane sizes; autoscale & scale-to-zero where possible.
- Lifecycle — automated TTL/cleanup for ephemeral stacks; cost reports in PR comments. → FinOps
📐 SLO Guardrails (Experience & safety you can measure)
| SLO / KPI | Target (Recommended) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Plan time (p95) | ≤ 3–5 min | Per stack/module |
| Policy evaluation time (p95) | ≤ 30–60 s | OPA/Sentinel gates |
| Change lead time (non-prod) | ≤ 30–60 min | From PR merge to apply |
| Prod change success rate | ≥ 99% | With staged rings |
| Drift detection cadence | Daily (critical) / Weekly | Auto-ticket on drift |
| Evidence completeness | 100% (plan, apply, diffs, approvals, ticket) | Export to SIEM |
| Secrets in code incidents | = 0 | Pre-commit & CI scanners |
SLO breaches trigger pipeline halt and SOAR actions (rollback, open incident, notify approvers). → SIEM / SOAR
🧰 Patterns (By outcome)
A) Secure Landing Zone (Multi-Account/Subscription)
- Org/OUs, SCP/Policies, baseline logs/KMS, account factory pipeline; identity federation; direct on-ramps; WAF at edge.
B) Kubernetes Platform as Code
- EKS/AKS/GKE clusters, node groups, CNI, Ingress GW, NetworkPolicies, service mesh mTLS/policy, cluster-autoscaler; app teams deploy via Helm in GitOps.
C) Data Platform / Lakehouse
- Storage (S3/Blob/GCS + Iceberg/Delta), Glue/Databricks/Spark jobs, dbt transformations, IAM + row/column masking; vector export for RAG.
D) Regulated Workloads (PCI/HIPAA/NIST)
- CMK/HSM, Object Lock, WAF positive models, ZTNA for admin, immutable logs, DR drills; evidence artifacts attached automatically.
E) Edge / Hybrid WAN
- SD-WAN fabric templates (QoS, path policies), site stacks, NAC posture links; Anycast front doors as code. → SD-WAN • NAC
🧪 Testing & Safety Nets
- Unit tests for modules (static checks/plan snapshots).
- Integration tests in ephemeral environments; smoke checks post-apply.
- Policy test suites — verify encryption, tags, RBAC boundaries.
- Rollbacks — automated
destroy/applyof prior version; circuit breakers on SLO dips. - Game days — key rotations, failovers, regional outages, WAF virtual patches, DR test-restores.
📜 Compliance Mapping (Examples)
- PCI DSS — encryption, segmentation, WAF, logging; change evidence & approvals.
- HIPAA — ePHI safeguards, least privilege, audit trails, key custody.
- ISO 27001 — A.12/A.14/A.16 operations, development, incident; change control.
- NIST 800-53/171 — AC/AU/SC/CM families; policy and configuration as code.
- CMMC — configuration management maturity; artifact exports.
All artifacts stream to SIEM; emergency changes orchestrated via SOAR. → SIEM / SOAR
🛠️ Implementation Blueprint (No-surprise rollout)
- Assess & target — platforms, accounts, regions, compliance goals, DR objectives.
- Design module library — VPC/landing zone/K8s/WAF/KMS/observability; version & catalog it.
- Stand up pipelines — plan/policy/apply with approvals; per-env rings; secrets from vault/KMS.
- Policy as code — OPA/Sentinel rules for encryption, tags, public exposure, logs, identity.
- Remote state & locks — S3+KMS+Object Lock/Azure Blob/GCS; locking enabled.
- Drift & inventory — scheduled plan/diff; auto-ticket; reconcile or quarantine changes.
- Observability — SLO dashboards; plan/apply times; drift and failure rates; cost comments.
- Runbooks — rollback, DR apply, emergency patch; weekly tuning loop.
- Train & handoff — contributor guide, review checklists, module usage patterns.
✅ Pre-Engagement Checklist
- 🧱 Target clouds/regions, accounts/subscriptions, environments (dev/qa/prod).
- 🔒 Guardrails required (encryption, network exposure, logging, identity).
- 🔑 Key/secret posture (KMS/HSM, vault, rotation).
- 👥 Access model (SSO/MFA, least-privilege roles, approvals).
- 🧩 Modules to build first (VPC, K8s, WAF, KMS, logging, on-ramps).
- 📊 SLO targets (plan/apply time, drift cadence, success rate, evidence coverage).
- 💰 Cost guardrails; tagging policy; budgets/alerts.
- 🧪 Testing strategy (unit/integration/policy), rollback/circuit breaker.
- 📜 Compliance packs (PCI/HIPAA/ISO/NIST/CMMC) & evidence format.
🔄 Where IaC Fits (Recursive View)
1) Grammar — resources live on Connectivity & Networks & Data Centers.
2) Syntax — cloud/K8s patterns in Cloud codified as modules.
3) Semantics — Cybersecurity policies enforced as code; keys & identity bound.
4) Pragmatics — SolveForce AI assists reviews, predicts drift, and flags risky changes.
5) Foundation — consistent terms via Primacy of Language; ontology in Language of Code Ontology.
6) Map — indexed in SolveForce Codex & Knowledge Hub.
📞 Launch Infrastructure as Code—Secure, Fast & Auditable
Related pages:
DevOps / CI-CD • Cloud • Kubernetes • Direct Connect • WAF / Bot Management • SIEM / SOAR • Cybersecurity • IAM / SSO / MFA • Key Management / HSM • Secrets Management • FinOps • Data Warehouse / Lakes • Knowledge Hub