Cloud Governance :
- It is the set of policies or principles that act as the guidance for the adoption use, and management of cloud technology services.
- It is an ongoing process that must sit on top of existing governance models.
- It is a set of rules you create to monitor and amend as necessary in order to control costs, improve efficiency, and eliminate security risks.
Need for Cloud Governance :
By implementing cloud governance, organizations can avoid the following issues as follows.
1. Security and privacy risks :
- This issue may arise due to unauthorized downloads/ installation of software, storage of illegal data, and access to restricted sites by users.
- Cloud Governance solutions cover multiple cloud security components. For example, Encryption, Security groups, Audit trails, Application access rules, Access controls.
2. Vendor lock-in :
- Many vendors opt for this, as this clause causes organizations to depend on the cloud service provider (or vendor) for products and services.
- This can be avoided by making changes to the SLA suitably and reduce dependencies on a single vendor, thus ensuring freedom to the organization.
3. Cloud Sprawl :
- This happens when employees of different departments use different programs and cloud infrastructure from third-party providers without involving the IT department and getting necessary approvals.
- If not detected and restricted, crowd sprawl may lead to fragmented, redundant, inefficient, and unmanaged cloud programs sitting on the enterprise cloud and unnecessarily creating trouble.
4. Shadow IT and unwarranted usage of cloud resources :
- This happens when employees in various departments do not follow the rules and regulations as imposed by the IT department on cloud usage resulting in security breaches and fragmented control throughout the organization.
- This leads to not getting sufficient results from the cloud in the long run.
5. Lack of data portability and interoperability :
- This happens when the cloud service provider or the inbuilt cloud infrastructure is incapable of connecting well with other software and products outside the organization.
- This may also lead to modules not compatible with each other and hence chaos in the cloud due to an inefficient system.