cfn_nag VS checkov

.pre-commit-config.yaml – contains the cfn-lint and cfn_nag pre-commit hooks.

For generic CloudFormation templates, check CFN-NAG.

If you use CDK, you should implement CDK nag; otherwise, use cfn-nag.

cfn_nag

CodeBuild will run a linting check against the CloudFormation Template using cfn-lint and will then run cfn-nag to check for patterns that indicate insecure resources within the CloudFormation template.

Security checks for the Cloudformation stack using cfn-nag

cdk-nag contains several Aspects to check your applications for best practices. It is especially useful if you need to be HIPAA-compliant or have other compliance requirements. It is inspired by cfn_nag which is a a tool checking for patterns in your CloudFormation templates.

cfn-lint and cfn_nag or other tools of that nature to check as you write so you don't need to continually try to deploy only to find that you've done something dumb.

There is another tool called cfn_nag that can check your code for potentially any insecure infrastructure. When you read the documentation around this tool, the author says it can check for things such as:

I recently wanted to use the cfn-nag tool on some templates I was writing but couldn't find any instructions to install on Windows, but I have found a way to do it.

Checkov Owner/Maintainer: Prisma Cloud by Palo Alto Networks (acquired in 2021) Age: First released on GitHub on March 31st, 2021 License: Apache License 2.0

‍Checkov is another great tool that examines your Terraform files (.tf), parsing the configurations and evaluating them against a comprehensive set of predefined policies. It scans Terraform-managed infrastructure and detects misconfigurations that could lead to security issues or non-compliance with best practices and regulations.

Bridgecrew — Infrastructure as code (IaC) security powered by the open source tool - Checkov. The core Bridgecrew platform is free for up to 50 IaC resources.

Kustomize: It provides a solution to customize the Kubernetes resource base configuration and differential configuration without template and DSL. It does not solve the constraint problem itself, but needs to cooperate with a large number of additional tools to check constraints, such as Kube-linter, Checkov and kubescape.

Checkov is a versatile static code analysis tool designed for infrastructure as code (IaC) and software composition analysis (SCA). It supports a wide range of technologies, including Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, Docker, and others, to detect security and compliance issues through graph-based scanning. Checkov also performs SCA scans, identifying vulnerabilities in open source packages and images by checking for Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). Additionally, it is integrated into Prisma Cloud Application Security, a platform that helps developers secure cloud resources and infrastructure-as-code files, enabling the identification, rectification, and prevention of misconfigurations throughout the development lifecycle.

For your Dockerfiles, you can also scan them. There are lots of tools that can check your Dockerfiles. They will validate if Dockerfile is compliant with Docker best practices such as not using root user, making sure a health check exists, and not exposing the SSH port. You can use Snyk and Checkov.

You could try https://www.checkov.io/

We use https://www.checkov.io/ for this, it's very simple to get started with and works really well as PR quality gate

Once there is a CI pipeline for delivering infra changes you can add static code analysis tools (checkov) and even start testing changes (terratest)

I just had a brief chat with one of the developers of Checkov and it sounds nice (and open source). I haven't had a chance to play with it, but if you want to it's at https://www.checkov.io/