Summary
These terms refer to templates that are used to deploy resources across on-premises and cloud infrastructures. IaC uses code to automate the deployment of compute, network, and storage services, as well as security policies (often denoted as policy as code). The terms baselines and golden images are often used interchangeably. They both use predefined templates to serve as starting points for secure system deployments. Languages and formats used to define IaC templates vary by vendor, but are written to be human readable.