After auditing dozens of production environments, these are the five blind spots I see over and over:

1. Exposed environment variables in CI/CD pipelines

Most teams hardcode secrets into their pipeline configs. If your CI runner gets compromised, everything is exposed. Use secret managers and rotate credentials on a schedule.

2. Default security groups on cloud instances

That "allow all inbound" rule you set up during development? It's still there. Audit your security groups monthly.

3. Unpatched container base images

Your Dockerfile probably pulls from a base image that hasn't been updated in months. Pin versions and scan with tools like Trivy or Grype on every build.

4. Missing rate limiting on internal APIs

Just because it's "internal" doesn't mean it's safe. Lateral movement attacks exploit exactly this assumption.

5. No alerting on privilege escalation

If someone grants themselves admin access at 3 AM, would you know? Set up real-time alerts for IAM changes.

This is exactly the kind of stuff we cover inside CyberVault — real-time threat detection and the security playbooks that actually matter.

If your team is shipping fast but not auditing faster, you're leaving the door open.