Production traffic light

How to answer. Yes: there is a pipeline, a document, and someone else has already done it. Partial: a pipeline exists but one person owns it or it is undocumented. No: deploys are manual or from a laptop.

How to answer. Yes: written, rehearsed, and migrations allow going back. Partial: you know how but it is not written or rehearsed, or the database side is unclear. No: no defined way back.

How to answer. Yes: almost everything in code, remote state, and a plan shows no surprises. Partial: part in code, part created by hand, or the state lives on a laptop. No: almost everything by hand.

How to answer. Yes: automatic backups with defined retention and a copy in another account/project (or region) with separate access. Partial: automatic backups exist but in the same project/account, or retention is undefined. No: no automatic backups.

How to answer. Yes: a real restore in the last 12 months, timed and documented. Partial: restored once but over a year ago, or not timed or documented. No: never restored.

How to answer. Yes: database and application spread over at least two zones with automatic failover. Partial: only one of the two (e.g. app in several zones, database in one) or never tested. No: everything in one zone.

How to answer. Yes: deletion protection on the database and versioning/retention on critical storage. Partial: only on some resources. No: none.

How to answer. Yes: symptom-based alerts with a defined owner and channel. Partial: alerts exist but mostly CPU/memory, noisy, or with no clear owner. No: no alerts, or nobody responds.

How to answer. Yes: centralised logs and audit trail on, with defined retention. Partial: only one of the two, or retention undefined. No: logs are lost on restart or there is no audit trail.

How to answer. Yes: resources tagged by environment or team, and a budget/alert active with an owner. Partial: one of the two, or only partly. No: nobody looks at the bill until it arrives.

How to answer. Yes: an inventory of environments with owners, and a schedule or scale-down when idle. Partial: you roughly know how many exist but they are not switched off or sized down, or not inventoried. No: you do not know how many there are, or they run permanently at production size.

How to answer. Yes: MFA on, at least two administrators, a role-based email, and the root account is not used daily nor has access keys. Partial: MFA exists but a single admin or a personal email. No: no MFA on admins, or the root account has keys or is used daily.

How to answer. Yes: access via SSO or groups, offboarding includes the cloud, reviewed periodically. Partial: a process exists but skips the cloud or is not reviewed. No: local users with passwords and nobody knows who has what.

How to answer. Yes: secrets in a manager and temporary credentials (roles or federated identity), no long-lived keys. Partial: a secrets manager exists but old keys (over 90 days) remain or keys are stored in CI. No: secrets in environment variables, in the repository or shared over chat.

How to answer. Yes: you reviewed it recently and there is no unnecessary exposure. Partial: you reviewed it long ago or only partly. No: there are (or you know there are) resources open to 0.0.0.0/0 without need.