What is Configuration Drift? Tools, Causes & Risks

In recent years, IT infrastructure and software development have evolved to adopt automated configuration management methods. Configuration management is a practice that involves tracking, maintaining, and controlling system changes.

As systems evolve, configurations can deviate from their intended state — a phenomenon known as configuration drift. Left unchecked, this drift can lead to severe issues, including system instability, security vulnerabilities, downtime, and data breaches.

In this blog post, we will explore the concept of configuration drift, the importance of maintaining consistent configurations, common causes of drift, tools to detect and remediate it, and best practices to minimize it.

What is configuration drift?

Configuration drift is when system configurations gradually deviate from their desired or documented state. This drift happens when changes are made to software or infrastructure settings over time without a proper change management process. We usually observe this situation in cases where system configuration is updated manually, often without governance.

This phenomenon can affect individual machines, software configurations, clusters, or entire IT systems. Configuration drift can have serious consequences…