As cloud computing adoption continues to increase, governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) must be a priority for businesses. One critical aspect of cloud governance is policy management. Policy management in cloud governance involves defining, implementing and enforcing rules and regulations to ensure cloud resources are used effectively, efficiently, and securely.
In this blog post, we’ll explore policy management in cloud governance, how it works, and its benefits. We’ll cover different approaches for policy management, and how it impacts your business with comparative numbers.
Why is policy management in cloud governance important?
Today, most enterprises have some form of cloud presence, and they must have a consistent set of policies to manage those resources regardless of form factors, locations or service models. Without cloud governance policies, enterprises might find themselves facing various security, compliance, and operational issues.
By efficiently applying security and compliance policies, business decisions are made better and with reduced risks. Notably, policy management helps reduce cloud security risks, optimizes resource usage, and improves the overall security posture of the organization.
Different approaches to policy management
Enterprises use different approaches to policy management in cloud governance, and each approach comes with its advantages and disadvantages. Below are a few of them.
Policy as code (PaC)
PaC, as the term suggests, involves writing policies as code or scripts. PaC allows teams to manage policies and deploy them automatically with trust and transparency. With PaC, policy rules are described, and program logic is scripted in standard programming languages like Python, JavaScript or Go. DevOps teams create PaC templates, and once approved, the templates can be used in the deployment of new workloads.
Human-driven policy management
For enterprises that rely on the experience of their personnel, human-driven policy management can be useful. This approach involves creating policies for cloud governance manually, often resulting from the expertise of personnel. Human-driven policy management is usually effective when dealing with highly sensitive information and for structured policy where there isn't already code to translate into policy.
Automated policy management
This approach involves deploying either a third-party or in-house policy management tool that can define policies at scale quickly. Automated policy management has the following advantages:
- Flexibility since various workflows and policies can be adapted to the specific scenario and the business context
- Cost-effectiveness as cloud service rules and best practices are understood and integrated into the automation policies to reduce manual interactions
- Real-time enforcement for changes in security policies, especially when there is a high volume of endpoints and distributed threats
How policy management impacts your business
The implementation of policy management in cloud governance brings various benefits, including:
- Speed: Using automated policy management reduces response times and greatly minimizes the time taken to implement new changes or react to an emerging threat
- Improved security: By ensuring that cloud usage complies with company policies, the security posture is enhanced. Policy management also reduces unauthorized access and improves the overall protection policy of the organization.
- Reduced costs: By monitoring resources and reducing the risk of a security breach, businesses save money in the long term.
Final thoughts
Policy management in cloud governance is essential to ensure your business maximizes cloud resources while remaining secure and compliant. By choosing the right policies that suit your unique needs and deploying them seamlessly, you can optimize cloud usage and avoid data breaches. Whether you prefer human-driven policy management or automated policy management, having policy management in the governance process will significantly enhance the benefits of cloud computing.
We hope this guide has been useful, and please feel free to share your thoughts or ask any questions in the comment section below.
References
- Microsoft Azure (2022). Azure Policy - Definition and enforcement of policies for resources. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-policy/
- Cloud Security Alliance (2020). Cloud Control Matrix (CCM) Version 3.0.1. https://cloudsecurityalliance.org/group/cloud-controls-matrix/
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) (2022). AWS config - Overview. https://docs.aws.amazon.com/config/latest/developerguide/Welcome.html