Governance for Legacy Systems in the Cloud
As more and more companies transition legacy systems to the cloud, it's essential to consider how governance should be applied to these systems to ensure continued regulatory compliance and maintain the integrity of the data. Traditional legacy systems are often siloed and managed by internal IT teams, which can create blind spots and control issues, affecting the security and compliance of the system.
The Benefits of Cloud Governance for Legacy Systems
The cloud offers several benefits for legacy systems when it comes to governance, including robust access control, automated patching and updates, and audit logging. By leveraging cloud governance, companies can have centralized control, ensuring that relevant stakeholders have access to the data they need while minimizing the risk of data breaches, unauthorized system access, and data corruption.
The Comparison
When we take a look at traditional legacy systems, we can see that there are substantial drawbacks when it comes to governance. As mentioned earlier, siloed systems make it difficult to manage or control all access points for different stakeholders. Furthermore, patching or upgrading the system's software is challenging to carry out because it needs to be done manually by the IT team. Updates, bug fixes and new features would have to be built on top of the existing code, making the software more robust and more challenging to maintain.
In contrast, implementing cloud governance requires minimal effort due to the ease of configuration and automation. AWS, for instance, offers a service called AWS Config, which allows admins to automate the evaluation of the configuration of their Amazon Web Service resources. When an AWS resource changes, AWS Config triggers the evaluation of the resource configuration against the rule sets. Additionally, audit logs are generated automatically and stored in a centralised location, allowing organizations to perform compliance analysis with ease.
Conclusion
Governance is a critical aspect of any legacy system and should be implemented successfully to maintain a safe and secure operation. The cloud offers several benefits over traditional legacy systems, such as increased control, access management, and automatic updates. By leveraging cloud governance, organizations can ensure regulatory compliance and maintain the integrity of the data.