Terraform policy is now in public beta, enabling teams to define and enforce governance seamlessly within their Terraform workflows.
As organizations scale their infrastructure across hybrid cloud environments, managing interrelated systems is no longer a simple task. With resources straddling public clouds, on-premises setups, and internal platforms, teams must coordinate their efforts across various tools, policy languages, and workflows. This complexity often leads to challenges in enforcing consistent governance across their environments.
To tackle these issues, HashiCorp has introduced Terraform policy (tfpolicy), which is now available in public beta within HCP Terraform. This declarative policy framework, built on HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language), is designed to help platform teams define and enforce governance policies using a familiar syntax, while enhancing their capabilities to manage modern infrastructures.
The Shift in Infrastructure Governance
Policy as code has become essential for contemporary infrastructure management. Established tools like Sentinel and Open Policy Agent (OPA) enable organizations to codify their governance needs, automate compliance checks, and strengthen security in increasingly complex environments. These tools serve as dedicated policy layers, evaluating infrastructures against established governance standards.
As infrastructures evolve with hybrid interconnections, governance demands now require deeper insights into resource relationships, inclusion of external context, and lifecycle validation. This shift highlights potential weaknesses in traditional policy frameworks, fuelling the demand for governance solutions that are easier to create and better integrated into everyday workflows.
Exploring tfpolicy
With Terraform emerging as a prominent control plane for numerous organizations, the integration of policy solutions into its workflows has become paramount. Terraform policy (tfpolicy) allows teams to implement governance policies directly in their Terraform configurations, eliminating the cognitive load of switching between different policy languages and tools.
tfpolicy integrates deeply within the Terraform ecosystem, enabling it to evaluate policies across various infrastructure providers. This close alignment means that governance is assessed throughout the entire lifecycle, with policy evaluations happening both prior to and following deployment. Organizations can enforce policies based on the real state of their infrastructure rather than just planned changes, all while utilizing familiar Terraform practices.
Innovative Governance Features
Beyond simplifying the policy writing process, tfpolicy offers a host of new governance capabilities tailored for modern infrastructures.
Policy Evaluation Using Resource Relationships
Understanding interactions between resources is key to effective governance. tfpolicy allows organizations to evaluate how multiple resources connect during policy enforcement. For instance, a common use case could require every IAM role to have at least one policy attached, ensuring thorough evaluations occur across the environment.
Incorporate Data Source Lookups in Policies
Governance decisions often require more information than what is included in infrastructure definitions. tfpolicy lets teams utilize provider data sources during policy checks, incorporating organizational standards and approved inventories directly into governance workflows. A practical example might involve enforcing that EC2 instances only use approved AMIs retrieved from a trusted data source.
Control on Provider and Module Downloads
Governance also extends to how infrastructure is built. With tfpolicy, teams can impose restrictions on where provider and module downloads originate, cutting down on supply chain vulnerabilities. A specific example could involve mandating that all Terraform modules come solely from an organization's private registry.
Post-Deployment Policy Evaluation
Not all governance insights can be gleaned before deployment. tfpolicy provides the ability to validate infrastructure post-deployment, checking provider-generated values and identifying any policy breaches that may only surface after resources have been provisioned. An example could include verifying that resource identifiers align with organizational standards after resources are created.
How to Get Started
The public beta release of Terraform policy marks a significant development in policy-as-code approaches tailored for Terraform. By merging HCL authoring with integrated governance capabilities, it aligns with the needs of evolving infrastructure ecosystems.
To dive deeper into Terraform policy's features, refer to the Terraform policy documentation. For those looking for assistance in writing and testing Terraform policy files or converting existing Sentinel policies, the tfpolicy agent skill is a valuable resource.
If you're new to Terraform, you can start using the free version of HCP Terraform to manage your infrastructure in any setting. Don't forget to link your HCP Terraform and HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) accounts for an easier sign-in process.
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