"Environment drift" occurs when different environments (development, testing, staging, production) slowly become misaligned due to manual updates or inconsistent configurations. Configuration Management helps prevent this by automating environment setups using code. Every environment is provisioned using the same configuration files, ensuring consistency. This removes the dependency on manual intervention and guarantees that all environments behave similarly, which is crucial for continuous deployment. Version controlling these configurations also means changes can be tracked, reviewed, and rolled back, making the entire process transparent and reliable. Therefore, configuration management tools play a pivotal role in maintaining integrity across all stages of the software lifecycle.