A pharmaceutical company is migrating its systems and infrastructure to the cloud. Due to security restrictions and regulatory policies, the company Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is concerned about…

Given the CEO's concern about security restrictions and regulatory policies, the very first step in a cloud migration must be to thoroughly review and understand all applicable compliance requirements. This foundational step ensures that the cloud environment can be designed and implemented to meet legal and industry mandates, mitigating risks and addressing executive concerns proactively.

Applying audit/compliance requirements comes after they have been defined and reviewed; you cannot apply them effectively without first understanding what they are.

While reviewing company security policies is important, it is secondary to understanding external regulatory compliance requirements, especially when the CEO's concern explicitly mentions 'regulatory policies.'

Updating security tools is a technical implementation step that should occur only after a clear understanding of compliance needs and security policies has been established.