Secure deployment readiness checklist
Document the ownership and evidence needed to choose and operate a hosted or customer-managed deployment.
Scope and ownership
Use this as a working template. Record an owner, evidence link, status (confirmed, pending, not applicable), and review date for every item. A checked box is not a certification or a substitute for reviewing the supporting evidence. Resolve critical unknowns before relying on the workflow.
- Deployment model/region/environment: ____; system and business owner: ____.
- Applications, users and intended workloads: ____; prohibited data/actions: ____.
- Responsibility split for compute, network, identity, storage, updates, monitoring and support: ____.
Architecture and data flows
Review the actual proposed topology. “Private” or “on-premises” alone does not explain where management traffic, model processing or artifacts go.
- Attach a diagram of control-plane, execution, application and storage connections.
- Record each destination, data category, purpose, location and party with access.
- Confirm identity integration, administrative roles, credential storage and access review.
- Identify model providers, optional integrations and further processing dependencies.
- Document retention, deletion, backup handling and the party responsible for each data set.
Readiness and failure behavior
Test operational prerequisites before production workflows depend on the deployment.
- Verify supported versions, capacity, DNS, proxies, certificates and network rules.
- Run a representative workflow and inspect the resulting evidence and sensitive-data exposure.
- Test loss of connectivity, expired credentials, unavailable capacity and incomplete execution.
- Document recovery, update, rollback and offboarding procedures.
- Agree incident contacts and the process for sharing sensitive diagnostics.
Procurement and acceptance
Contractual commitments should describe the selected service and deployment, including dependencies and exclusions.
- Confirm contracting entity, service scope, DPA applicability and any necessary transfer terms.
- Review assurance evidence for its actual entity, systems, period and exceptions.
- Confirm availability/support terms, responsibilities, usage assumptions and fees.
- Record critical gaps, accepted exceptions, approver, date and review schedule.
Related guidance
Use the enterprise guides to develop the workflow behind this template. Confirm product capabilities, commercial commitments and deployment-specific controls with the relevant owner.
