Every cloud leader talks about security priorities. But when you ask what metrics they use to measure infrastructure security posture, the answers tend to get pretty vague.

Compliance scores? CVE dashboards? Penetration test results? These matter. But they miss the root cause of most cloud security failures: how infrastructure gets delivered in the first place.

Most security teams focus on finding problems after they happen. The real opportunity? Preventing them at the source. That means measuring and improving Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) coverage: what I've referred to in a previous blog as teams' cloud platform blindspot.

The Hidden Security Gap

Cloud teams love IaC for good reasons. It standardizes delivery. It scales operations. It makes disaster recovery possible. But even advanced organizations struggle with partial coverage. Research shows most companies have 30-40% lower IaC coverage than they estimate.

The rest lives in cloud consoles. Manual scripts. One-off changes. These unmanaged resources create massive security blind spots.

Unmanaged infrastructure carries double the security risk of code-managed resources. When someone makes manual changes in the cloud console, they bypass every security control you built. No policy enforcement. No validation. No audit trail.

Why Low IaC Coverage Creates Security Risk

Four core problems emerge when infrastructure lives outside code:

• No preventive controls. Manual changes skip CI/CD pipelines entirely. No static analysis. No policy validation. No security scanning. Vulnerabilities slip through undetected.
• Slow, error-prone remediation. Fixing misconfigurations manually takes time and introduces new errors. Without code ownership, accountability gets fuzzy. Problems drag on.
• No reusable security patterns. Security configurations stay locked in individual resources instead of shared modules. Teams rebuild the same protections repeatedly. Inconsistently.
• Security drifts over time. Your Terraform modules evolve with new security standards. Unmanaged resources stay frozen at old configurations. The gap widens every month.

Making IaC Coverage Actionable: How Firefly Helps

Firefly tracks IaC coverage as a core security metric. The platform maps every cloud asset to its management state. You see exactly which resources are governed by code and which create risk.

The coverage classification works like this:

• Critical (Under 50% coverage): High risk. Most infrastructure bypasses security controls.
• High (50-80% coverage): Medium risk. Some governance exists but gaps remain.
• Medium (80-90% coverage): Low risk. Strong coverage with room for improvement.
• Low-No (90-100% coverage): Full control. Infrastructure governed by code and policy.

Production environments should hit green. Anything less means vulnerabilities waiting to surface.

The Key to Creating Shared Accountability

Traditional security workflows create friction. Security teams find risks. Cloud teams get tickets. Problems bounce between teams while vulnerabilities persist.

IaC coverage changes this dynamic. Both teams share the same metric. Security teams see governance gaps. Cloud teams know exactly what needs fixing. Faster action. Better outcomes.

Firefly makes this practical. The platform automatically detects unmanaged resources. Generates IaC code to bring them under governance. Applies security policies consistently. Both teams work from the same dashboard toward the same goal.

What You Should Do Next:

• Measure your current coverage. Most organizations don't know how much infrastructure is actually governed by code. Start with discovery.
• Track coverage as a security KPI. Put it on security dashboards alongside vulnerability counts and compliance scores. Use it to guide remediation priorities.
• Treat unmanaged resources as security gaps. Resources outside code management are invisible to most security tools. Include them in risk assessments.
• Close coverage gaps systematically. Modern tools, such as Firefly, make it possible to codify existing infrastructure quickly. The benefits compound over time.
• Align teams around shared metrics. Give security and cloud teams a common language. IaC coverage measures risk and provides clear remediation paths.

Security Starts with Delivery

Infrastructure used to be background plumbing. Today it's the foundation for everything your business builds. As development accelerates and attack surfaces expand, secure delivery becomes critical.

IaC coverage isn't just an operational metric. It's the foundation of cloud security strategy. Organizations that measure and improve coverage prevent more problems than those that only respond to incidents.

The best security happens before deployment. Not after.

Uncover Your Actual IaC Coverage Today

Want to know your real IaC coverage? Most organizations overestimate by 30-40%. Firefly shows you the complete picture (and you can try it here for yourself, or request a demo.)

‍