tfsec (Terraform Security Scanner)
Open-source static analysis security scanner for Terraform IaC. Detects security misconfigurations in Terraform configurations before deployment — checks for insecure S3 buckets, open security groups, unencrypted resources, missing logging, and hundreds of other cloud security best practice violations across AWS, Azure, GCP, and other providers. Part of Aqua Security's open-source toolchain.
Score Breakdown
⚙ Agent Friendliness
🔒 Security
Open-source (MIT) — fully auditable. Runs entirely locally — no Terraform code sent to external services. Maintained by Aqua Security, a reputable security company. No credentials needed.
⚡ Reliability
Best When
You're working with Terraform-based infrastructure and need fast, targeted IaC security scanning integrated into CI/CD without complexity.
Avoid When
You need multi-IaC support across Terraform, CloudFormation, Kubernetes, and Ansible — Checkov covers all of these in one tool.
Use Cases
- • Scan Terraform plans and configurations in agent-driven CI/CD pipelines to catch security misconfigurations before cloud deployment
- • Automate IaC security gating — fail agent-managed Terraform deployments when critical security findings are detected
- • Audit AI infrastructure Terraform configurations for security compliance before provisioning cloud resources for agent workloads
- • Generate structured JSON security reports from Terraform scans for agent-driven policy enforcement workflows
- • Integrate tfsec into agent DevSecOps pipelines that validate infrastructure security automatically on every PR
Not For
- • Runtime cloud security monitoring — tfsec scans IaC at design time; use Prowler or CloudSploit for deployed resource scanning
- • Non-Terraform IaC — use Checkov for multi-IaC support (CloudFormation, Kubernetes YAML, Ansible); tfsec is Terraform-specific
- • SAST for application code — tfsec is IaC-specific; use Semgrep or SonarQube for application code security
Interface
Authentication
No authentication required — open-source CLI tool. No external API calls during scanning. Scans run entirely locally against Terraform source files.
Pricing
tfsec core is free and open-source (MIT). Aqua Security offers commercial products that include tfsec functionality with management UI.
Agent Metadata
Known Gotchas
- ⚠ tfsec is being deprecated in favor of Trivy IaC scanning — Aqua now recommends using `trivy config` for IaC scanning; tfsec may not receive updates
- ⚠ Custom check rules require Go or YAML — agents cannot define ad-hoc checks without writing check files
- ⚠ Terraform modules referenced from external sources (registry, git) may not be scanned — only local module source code is analyzed
- ⚠ Exit code 1 indicates findings, not errors — agents must distinguish scan execution failures from policy violations
- ⚠ Finding severity levels (CRITICAL, HIGH, MEDIUM, LOW) are relative to Terraform security — may not align with your organization's severity taxonomy
- ⚠ JSON output format changed between versions — pin tfsec version in CI to avoid parsing breakage when upgrading
Alternatives
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Scores are editorial opinions as of 2026-03-07.