Version Control and Approval of Critical Changes
Traceability and formal approval of changes
Version control and formal approval of critical changes are the mechanisms that prevent a code or configuration change from reaching production without having been reviewed by someone other than its author. A well-used version control system records who changed what, when and why, while an approval process requires high-impact changes, such as changes to firewall rules, database permissions or infrastructure deployments, to go through a security owner before being carried out. This matters because most serious production incidents don't come from sophisticated attacks but from poorly validated changes applied at the wrong moment. A concrete example is requiring double approval and a scheduled maintenance window for any change to cloud access rules, preventing an urgent Friday-afternoon change from opening a port nobody ever closes again.