For Irish enterprises in regulated sectors, moving to the cloud is no longer optional. But the "fastest" path—Lift & Shift—is proving to be a compliance minefield. Here is why refactoring is the only secure forward.
The "Lift & Shift" Trap
Migrating legacy .NET applications directly to AWS or Azure Virtual Machines (EC2/VMs) without architectural changes preserves all their vulnerabilities. In a cloud environment, these monolithic vulnerabilities are exposed to new attack vectors that didn't exist in your private data center.
Compliance Failures
Auditors for ISO 27001 and SOC 2 are increasingly flagging "unmanaged VMs" as high-risk. Why? Because patching, scaling, and key management remain manual processes.
The Solution: Cloud-Native Refactoring
Instead of moving the server, move the logic. By containerizing applications (Docker/Kubernetes) or moving to Serverless (Lambda/Functions), you remove the Operating System maintenance burden entirely.
- Automated Compliance: Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) documents every permission.
- Reduced Attack Surface: Short-lived containers give attackers no persistence.
- Cost Efficiency: Pay only for milliseconds of execution, not idle CPU time.
Conclusion
For regulated industries, "Lift & Shift" is technical debt disguised as progress. The upfront cost of refactoring pays dividends in security, auditability, and sleep.