Will this slow our team down?

Done right, you add 60–120 seconds to CI for checks and proofs, while removing days of manual audit prep and security back-and-forth. We’ve reduced change lead time by 20–30% at clients by eliminating ping-pong with security reviewers.

Do we need to re-platform to adopt policy-as-code?

No. Start with CI checks (Conftest, Checkov, Trivy) and Terraform modules in your existing setup. Add Kyverno/Gatekeeper for Kubernetes clusters you already run. You can layer OIDC and Vault/Secrets Manager without touching app code beyond config.

How do we handle legitimate exceptions?

Treat exceptions as code with owner, ticket, and expiry. Policies read the waiver file and emit warnings, not hard fails. Weekly reports nag owners. No open-ended waivers, no undocumented Slack approvals.

What about AI-generated infrastructure code?

Use LLMs to draft, not decide. Policy checks catch hallucinated wildcards and insecure defaults. We’ve caught several `iam:*` and public S3 policies from AI output within hours thanks to OPA/Checkov gates.

Security-compliance · Dec 3, 2025 · 10 minute read

Stop Hand-Waving Compliance: Codify Least-Privilege, Secret Rotation, and Dependency Risk — and Keep Shipping

Turn security policy into Terraform, OPA, and pipeline guardrails that enforce least-privilege, rotate secrets, and prove dependency hygiene — without grinding delivery to a halt.

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Stop Hand-Waving Compliance: Codify Least-Privilege, Secret Rotation, and Dependency Risk — and Keep Shipping

Key takeaways

Implementation checklist