IaC Meets Reality: Engineering for the Cloud You Actually Have

We all hear it: "Manage your infrastructure as code." But what happens when the reality of multi-account setups, unmanaged settings, and the limitations of your IaC tool start pushing your team toward manual fixes?

In this talk, we’ll challenge the idea that infrastructure as code is the only path to secure, scalable cloud environments. Instead, we’ll explore a hybrid approach —combining IaC with automated remediations— to fill the gaps and reduce drift without burning out your team. This talk is about shifting the mindset: treating your cloud like a living system, balancing proactive control with reactive intelligence. If you've ever felt that IaC alone isn't enough, this talk is for you.

Attendees will learn how to adopt a hybrid strategy that blends IaC with automated remediation workflows to close security and compliance gaps, reduce configuration drift, and reduce toil.