Changes to technology platforms or business processes introduce risk to an enterprise. Cloud governance helps mitigate these risks and ensures minimal interruption to innovation or adoption efforts.
So, what is cloud governance? It’s a set of rules meant to deal with costs and efficiencies in the cloud. They differ from one organization to the other.
In essence, cloud governance best practices are about:
- Creating rules under which the enterprise operates in the cloud.
- Monitoring activity on the cloud to guarantee compliance.
- Adjusting where necessary to achieve business objectives.
Why Are Cloud Governance Best Practices Necessary?
In a rapidly evolving cloud environment, it becomes harder to control how far users deviate from the enterprise’s strategic direction. The self-provisioning nature of the cloud is limitless. Cloud governance best practices help control costs, performance, and security.
Cloud governance best practices help maximize visibility, ensure compliance, and maintain control. Governance best practices aren’t limited to the optimization of performance and costs. They also help establish safeguards for any cloud-related events that can affect finances, operations, and security.
Without these safeguards in place, there’s a possibility of a “Shadow IT” environment emerging. The uncontrolled use of unapproved assets can introduce weaknesses, cause inefficiencies, and increase vulnerabilities to cybersecurity threats.
Best Practices of Cloud Governance
Best practices vary depending on the objectives and growth stage of the enterprise. Each business should conduct an inventory of its cloud resources to determine what works best. However, there are common governance disciplines that help develop policy and align toolchains. They include:
1. Cost Management
Costs are a major concern for many enterprises when moving to the cloud. Balancing adoption pacing, performance demands, and cloud costs can be challenging. For this reason, it is important to develop policies for cost control across all cloud deployments.
2. Security
Security is a core part of IT, and more so the cloud, given its unique security concerns. It’s also complex and unique to each enterprise. The IT team identifies the security requirements of the organization. It, then, enforces them across assets, data, and network configurations.
3. Identity
Inconsistencies in the way you apply identity requirements increase the risk of a breach. Coming up with cloud governance best practices for identity is critical. You should apply the policies across all cloud resources.
4. Resource Consistency
Cloud operations need consistent resource configuration. Governance tooling can help to consistently configure the resources in the cloud. This helps manage risks related to drift, onboarding, recovery, and discoverability.
5. Deployment Acceleration
Standardization, centralization, and consistency when approaching cloud deployment and configuration help improve governance. When a cloud-based governance tool provides them, they form a cloud factor that helps accelerate cloud deployment activities.
Conclusion
It’s easier to come up with governance policies when there’s total visibility of business resources. The cloud is a different ball game from an on-premises deployment. It’s harder to enforce governance policies. This is why many businesses rely on cloud management platforms, such as CloudBolt. These tools give them the capacity to monitor and enforce cloud governance best practices.
