IBM has officially announced the launch of Infrastructure and Security Lifecycle innovations, along with a preview of Project infragraph, marking a new strategic investment for its HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP).
To understand the significance of such a development, we must take into account a fact that, even though infrastructure as code and identity-based security are typically foundational practices for cloud, programs complexity continues to grow with organizations working to operationalize AI. Not just that, the underlying infrastructure is also spelling the need for more intelligence, integration, and autonomous operations.
“Project infragraph is a major step toward infrastructure that can observe, reason, and act,” said Dinesh Nirmal, Senior Vice President, IBM Software. “By combining automation with real-time infrastructure intelligence, we are creating the control layer that unlocks the next era of AI-powered operations.”
Talk about how IBM’s latest brainchild addresses the given problem, we begin from the assortment of new Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM) capabilities.
These capabilities include HCP Terraform Stacks, capable of making it possible for users to organize and deploy Terraform configurations across multiple infrastructure components and environments as a single management unit, all geared towards simplifying and addressing operational overhead.
Next up, we have the HCP Terraform search facility, which is designed to accelerate infrastructure as code onboarding. This it does through a feature to quickly discover and import resources in bulk, minimizing manual and error-prone processes.
Another detail worth a mention is rooted in an assortment of HCP Terraform actions. These actions can basically empower you to automate and streamline Day 2 infrastructure operations by codifying them directly alongside your infrastructure code so to address operational costs. The idea here is to facilitate first-class integration between Terraform and Red Hat Ansible for end-to-end infrastructure as code.
Beyond that, there is a capability known by the name of HCP Terraform Hold Your Own Key, something which banks upon a self-managed key to encrypt sensitive data, and therefore, prioritize data governance.
Joining that would be the HCP Terraform MCP server, designed to manage infrastructure, using natural language, to interact with private and public Terraform registries, trigger workspace runs, and gain validated, context-aware insights directly from an AI client or IDE.
“HashiCorp’s latest product updates and the introduction of Project infragraph signal more than product momentum—they represent the evolution of a platform that can unify infrastructure and security data, and accelerate intelligent decision-making,” said Armon Dadgar, CTO and co-founder of HashiCorp. “We’re focused on helping customers build secured, scalable cloud programs that are ready for AI.”
Turning our attention towards IBM’s new Security Lifecycle Management (SLM) capabilities, they include the prospect of HCP Boundary RDP credential injection. You see, users can effectively simplify secured remote access by injecting credentials directly into Windows RDP sessions. Such a mechanism really goes the distance to solve concerns in the context of exposing secrets to end users.
Then, there is an aspect inclusive of bHCP Vault Radar Jira SaaS scanning and IDE plugin enhancement, committed to detecting and surfacing exposed secrets earlier in the development process within developer IDEs and in tickets created across Jira.
After that, we reach upon the HCP Vault Radar MCP server. This particular server arrives on the scene bearing an ability to interface directly with HCP Vault Radar using natural language, as well as integrating with other security agents using MCP.
Complementing that would be the HCP Vault Dedicated – AWS PrivateLink, which can very well enhance private networking, prioritize compliance, and meet security requirements, done on the back of a streamlined connectivity with AWS PrivateLink.
Hold on, we still have a few bits left to unpack, considering we haven’t yet touched upon the availability of HCP Vault Dedicated – Azure DNS. The said component paves the way for customer-managed DNS forwarding and resolution for Azure based HCP Vault Dedicated cluster.
We also haven’t touched upon the potential for HCP Vault Dedicated – secrets inventory reporting, a feature focused on generating visibility into secret usage, stale secrets, and adoption trends to instigate security posture improvements.
Apart from that, we have Vault Enterprise 1.21 coming into play. Vault Enterprise 1.21 is essentially designed to automate cryptographic workflows, enable post-quantum readiness, and enforce zero-trust controls with new APIs and capabilities.
