Traditionally, IT administrators manage identity by clicking through application dashboards: adding users, changing policies, and updating settings manually. This process is time-consuming and error-prone, and leaves no clear record of what was changed. If someone clicks the wrong button, there’s often no way to version, redeploy, or recover the configuration.
Terraform changes this by turning those manual actions into code. Instead of relying on clicks, administrators define users, groups, policies, and settings in configuration files that can be reviewed, versioned in Git, and applied consistently across environments.
From manual management to infrastructure as code
With Terraform and ConductorOne, those configuration files are applied directly to your identity environment, eliminating repetitive manual updates. This approach has several advantages:
- Plan changes before deployment: Preview updates to catch errors before they impact production.
- Version control and peer review: Store configurations in Git, require approvals, and track who made changes.
- Auditability over time: Maintain a complete historical record of changes to your identity environment.
The result is more efficiency, fewer mistakes, and a stable, consistent system.
Automating integrations
When ConductorOne integrates with other cloud services, it uses credentials such as API keys or secrets. These need to be rotated regularly. Without automation, someone must remember to update settings manually, which can lead to downtime if keys expire.
With Terraform, you can programmatically rotate those secrets and inject the new values into ConductorOne. That ensures integrations remain secure and available without manual intervention.
Policy as code
Policies in ConductorOne control how requests are handled: who approves them, where reviews are routed, and how revocations are processed.
Managing these policies by hand can be risky, as a single misconfiguration might grant unintended access. By managing policies with Terraform, you add guardrails. Changes can be reviewed, tracked, and deployed consistently, reducing the chance of mistakes.
Applications and entitlements
Applications and their entitlements can be enriched in ConductorOne with owners, descriptions, and policies that dictate how access is requested and approved.
Defining and managing these through Terraform speeds up deployment. For example, Brex used Terraform to update 400 entitlement policies in just a few days. That allowed them to bring a new application online quickly, with policies already in place to govern access.
Access profiles
Access Profiles bundle entitlements together and define who can request or automatically receive them. For example, you might grant specific entitlements to users in certain groups or to engineers on call.
Using Terraform, you can manage these profiles in a clear, repeatable way. This ensures the right access is provisioned consistently, reducing manual effort and misconfiguration risk.
Terraform and ConductorOne together give administrators the ability to manage identity as code. From rotating secrets and enforcing policies to onboarding applications and managing access profiles, Terraform provides automation, stability, and a full audit trail.
This technical approach not only improves efficiency, it also strengthens the security and governance of your identity program.
Want to learn more? Book a demo today.
