AWS, Azure & GCP · Cloud across providers
What are common cloud mistakes?
Short answer
Common mistakes include open storage buckets, long-lived access keys, single-AZ deployments, no cost visibility and treating the cloud like a data centre. Most are configuration and ownership problems.
Most cloud incidents come from how the platform is used, not from the provider failing. The same few mistakes appear across teams: permissive identity, exposed storage, missing redundancy and no feedback loop on cost or reliability.
Recurring mistakes
- Public storage buckets or databases reachable from the internet
- Long-lived access keys checked into code or shared across services
- Single-AZ deployments with no failover for critical workloads
- No tagging, budgets or ownership for cloud spend
- Lifting and shifting every workload without replatforming
- Manual console changes that drift from infrastructure as code
- No backup restore tests and no incident runbooks
How to prevent them
- Organisation guardrails that block public storage and weak identity by default
- Infrastructure as code with policy checks in the pipeline
- Account and network baselines with logging enabled from day one
- Regular cost and reliability reviews with named owners
- Game days and restore drills that exercise failure paths
Follow-ups you should expect
Interviewers use these to check whether the first answer was understanding or memorisation.
- 1Which mistake would you fix first in a new account?
- 2How do guardrails prevent configuration mistakes?
- 3Why is lift-and-shift risky if left unmanaged?
- 4How do you make cost ownership stick?
Say it in the interview
The recurring mistakes are exposed storage, long-lived keys, single-AZ critical workloads and no cost visibility. They are usually process problems, not provider limitations. I would fix them with guardrails, infrastructure as code and paved-road templates, then review cost and reliability with named owners, because reminding people to be careful does not scale.
Use this as a model, not a script. Saying it in your own words is what makes it survive follow-up pressure.
Related questions
Reading is step one
Now say it out loud.
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