Field guide · Cloud operations
Who controls your cloud accounts, backups and recovery?
Make account control, monitoring, backups, maintenance, costs, and recovery responsibilities visible before an incident.
Reviewed 2 August 2026
Practical guidance · Use with one real record
Reviewed by Deepak, founder and technical builder at NavMantra.
01BusinessAccount + cost
02App teamCode + releases
03ProviderUnderlying service
Running workloadAvailability + recovery
Accounts and access
- The organisation controls the provider account and billing relationship.
- Named people have appropriate access; shared credentials are avoided.
- Multi-factor authentication and recovery methods are documented.
- Offboarding removes access from every relevant system.
Observation and escalation
- Health checks represent actual service availability.
- Alerts have an owner, severity, and response path.
- Logs are retained long enough to investigate likely incidents.
- Provider notices and renewal failures reach a monitored destination.
Backup and recovery
- Backups cover the data and configuration required to restore service.
- Retention and off-site requirements are explicit.
- Restore procedures are tested in isolation.
- Recovery time and acceptable data loss are agreed for the workload.
Maintenance and cost
List recurring updates, certificate and domain renewals, capacity checks, security reviews, and provider costs. Assign an owner and review frequency to each. An installed monitoring or backup product is not evidence that the operating responsibility is covered.
Start with one process that is already in use.
Tell us where work is getting stuck. We first check whether a focused review is suitable and usually reply within two business days.