Terraform Security Best Practices for AWS: IAM Is Only One Layer
Terraform Security Best Practices for AWS: IAM Is Only One Layer Terraform security on AWS is not just a least-privilege IAM exercise. This guide shows how to harden runner identities, trust policies, state backends, validation gates, and provider dependencies so infrastructure changes fail safely instead of failing live. TL;DR Terraform security on AWS breaks in four places: the identity that runs Terraform, the policies and trust relationships it can assume, the state and plan artifacts it writes, and the provider or module dependencies it downloads. AWS and HashiCorp documentation point to a safer pattern: use temporary credentials and scoped roles, cap delegated access with permissions boundaries and organization guardrails, store state remotely with locking and recovery controls, keep secrets out of plans when possible, and pin plus lock providers and modules so reviewable code is the thing that changes. IAM matters, but it is not the whole attack surface. Terraform security i...