Top 7 Causes of Infrastructure Drift

Infrastructure drift can disrupt IT operations by causing differences between the desired state of infrastructure and its actual state. This can lead to unexpected behaviors, vulnerabilities, and bypassing established processes. The primary causes of infrastructure drift include high-severity issues that need fixing, frustration with set processes/tools, human errors, edge cases requiring quick changes, lack of automation, API changes, and poor access control management. To prevent drift, implementing continuous drift detection, defining clear governance and compliance, leveraging policy as code, using security vulnerability scanners, streamlining change management processes, regularly updating IaC tools and provider versions, and utilizing platforms like Spacelift can be helpful.