A cloud migration is the rare moment when you get to rebuild your security posture from a clean sheet. Treat it as an opportunity, not an afterthought, and you'll come out the other side more secure than you went in.

Start with an honest assessment

Map what you have before you move it: data classifications, trust boundaries, and the compliance obligations that actually apply. You can't protect what you haven't inventoried.

Bake compliance into the pipeline

Manual audits once a year don't scale. Encode your controls as code and check them continuously.

  • Least-privilege identity by default
  • Encryption in transit and at rest
  • Continuous evidence collection in CI/CD

Migrate in safe increments

Move one bounded slice at a time, validate it, and keep a rollback path. A big-bang cutover concentrates risk at the worst possible moment.

Verify, then verify again

Run penetration tests and config scans against the new environment before it carries real traffic. The goal is to find the gaps before someone else does.