Tech Circle LabsEducational guidance only. This article is not legal advice, an audit conclusion or an authorization to test systems.
Clarify responsibilities
Responsibilities vary by service model. Your organization still manages some combination of identity, configuration, workloads and data. Use provider documentation to identify the actual boundary.
Review exposure and permissions
Check public storage, unused identities, broad roles and administrative access. Prefer least privilege and review privileged changes. Encryption cannot correct an overly broad access policy.
Prepare operational recovery
Document dependencies, recovery access, backups and restoration procedures. Test recovery in an isolated environment with agreed objectives; the existence of a backup alone does not prove recovery.