It's really, really simple. Just restrict access to the production databases. Structure the access in such a way that this kind of honest mistake simply cannot

It's really, really simple. Just restrict access to the production databases. Structure the access in such a way that this kind of honest mistake simply cannot happen. Add an extra hoop to jump through to access prod. Easy as that. Better yet, prod should be in a different "cloud universe" (root account, etc) from dev. > The company/CTO made the huge mistakes. Absolutely.