Cloud Security Checklist: 12 Controls to Review First

Cloud security failures are often less about sophisticated attacks and more about inconsistent identity, configuration and visibility. Start with foundational controls before adding complexity.

12 controls to review

• Strong MFA and conditional access for privileged identities
• Separate admin accounts and least privilege
• Centralized audit and security logging
• Configuration baselines and drift detection
• Public exposure review for storage, databases and services
• Secrets and key management
• Endpoint/workload protection
• Vulnerability and patch management
• Backup immutability and restore testing
• Network segmentation and controlled ingress/egress
• Incident response runbooks and alert ownership
• Cost and resource governance to detect sprawl