Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) compliance - Administrator Guide - Cortex Cloud Posture Management - Cortex CLOUD

Cortex Cloud Application Security

Product
Cortex Cloud Posture Management
Cortex Cloud Application Security > Cortex CLOUD
Creation date
2025-01-22
Last date published
2026-05-31
Category
Administrator Guide

IaC compliance focuses on the security posture of your cloud resource definitions (Terraform, CloudFormation) before deployment. By analyzing templates, Cortex Cloud identifies misconfigurations that violate specific regulatory frameworks.

Supported IaC compliance standards

The IaC scanner maps findings to the following compliance standards and frameworks:

  • PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard)

    • PCI DSS v3.2.1 - Payment card data protection requirements

    • PCI DSS v4.0 - Latest PCI DSS requirements

    • PCI DSS v4.0.1 - Updated PCI DSS v4.0 requirements

  • NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology)

    • NIST 800-53 Rev4 - Security and privacy controls for federal information systems

    • NIST 800-53 Rev 5 - Updated security and privacy controls

    • NIST SP 800-171 Revision 2 - Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information

    • NIST SP 800-171 Revision 3 - Latest CUI protection requirements

    • NIST SP 800-172 - Enhanced security requirements for CUI

    • NIST CSF - Cybersecurity Framework

    • NIST CSF v2.0 - Updated Cybersecurity Framework

  • ISO Standards

    • ISO 27001:2013 - Information security management systems

    • ISO/IEC 27001:2022 - Latest information security management standard

  • HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)

    Security and privacy requirements for healthcare data

  • GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)

    European Union data protection and privacy requirements

  • SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act)

    Financial reporting and corporate governance requirements

  • CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act)

    California data privacy requirements

  • CIS (Center for Internet Security) Benchmarks

    • AWS:

      • CIS v1.2.0 (AWS)

      • CIS AWS 3 Tier Web Architecture Benchmark v.1.0.0

    • Azure:

      • CIS v1.1 (Azure)

      • CIS v1.2.0 (Azure)

      • CIS v1.3.0 (Azure)

      • CIS v1.3.1 (Azure)

      • CIS v1.4.0 (Azure)

      • CIS v1.5.0 (Azure) - Level 1

      • CIS v2.0.0 (Azure) Level 1

      • CIS v2.1 (Azure) Level 1

      • CIS v2.1.0 (Azure) Level 1

    • GCP (Google Cloud Platform):

      • CIS v1.0.0 (GCP)

      • CIS v1.1.0 (GCP)

      • CIS v1.2.0 (GCP)

      • CIS v1.3.0 (GCP)

      • CIS v2.0.0 (GCP) Level 1

      • CIS v3.0 (GCP) Level 1

      • CIS v3.0.0 (GCP) Level 1

      • CIS v4.0.0 (GCP) Level 1

    • GKE (Google Kubernetes Engine):

      • CIS v1.1.0 (GKE)

      • CIS v1.2.0 (GKE)

      • CIS v1.3.0 (GKE) - Level 1

      • CIS v1.4.0 (GKE) - Level 1

      • CIS v1.5.0 (GKE) - Level 1

    • OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure):

      • CIS v1.2.0 (OCI)

      • CIS v2.0.0 (OCI) - Level 2

      • CIS v3.0.0 (OCI) - Level 2

  • CIS Controls

    • CIS Controls v7.1 - Implementation groups for cybersecurity

    • CIS Controls v8 - Updated cybersecurity controls

    • CIS Controls v8.1 - Latest CIS Controls version

Rule mapping logic

To ensure consistency between build-time and run-time security, IaC compliance relies on a unified mapping logic.

IaC rules in Cortex Cloud are mapped to corresponding runtime CSPM (Cloud) or KSPM (Kubernetes) rules.

If an IaC rule is mapped to a runtime rule, it automatically inherits the compliance standards and controls associated with that runtime rule. This ensures that a violation detected in code (IaC) is categorized under the same compliance control as if it were detected in the cloud.

compliance-map-arrchitecture.png
Scan types

IaC compliance scanning is available in the following scan types: 

  • Periodic scans: scheduled repository scans

  • PR scans: pull request validation

  • Branch scans: branch-specific scans

  • External project scans: third-party project analysis