What is the recommended approach to protect sensitive data identified by the security team in Terraform state files?

The recommended approach to protect sensitive data identified by the security team in Terraform state files is to store the state in an encrypted backend. Terraform's state file can contain sensitive information such as passwords or API keys, and if this file is stored unencrypted, it may be accessible to unauthorized users, posing a security risk.

Using an encrypted backend ensures that even if someone gains access to the backend storage, they cannot read the contents of the state file without the proper encryption keys. This is a best practice for maintaining security and confidentiality of sensitive data within your infrastructure as code practices.

The other options, while they may seem useful, do not provide a sufficient level of security or introduce potential difficulties in managing infrastructure effectively:

1. Storing secrets in a secrets.tfvars file exposes them in plain text, as this file can still be part of the version control and accessed by team members.

2. Deleting the state file after each run could lead to loss of important state information that Terraform needs to track resources, which ultimately disrupts infrastructure management.

3. Editing the state file to scrub out sensitive data is risky and can lead to inconsistency and corruption of the state, which can cause problems when trying to manage resources.

Overall, using an encrypted backend is