Organizations can reap the many benefits of moving their IT workloads to the Cloud. However, compliance is one of the key challenges in cloud adoption. This article will help you understand and address compliance issues related to cloud computing, regardless of whether your cloud use case involves low-cost data storage or scaling your infrastructure for critical business applications.

Related post – What is Cloud infrastructure?

Why Compliance is important in the cloud

There are many industry guidelines that govern how companies should handle and protect sensitive data. You may have to adhere to regulations depending on the industry you work in and the type of service you provide. These regulations establish guidelines, policies, and practices that help protect sensitive data and increase information security. Compliant means you have passed an audit of your IT security software and workflows to ensure they conform with relevant regulations.

Non-compliance can lead to hefty fines, lawsuits, and reputational damage for organizations. Even the most cautious companies have begun to shift some services to cloud computing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cloud adoptions are often rapid and can be caused by COVID, or because of a pressing need to scale IT services.

Your business can benefit from a secure and successful cloud implementation by knowing the key compliance issues and how to overcome them.

Key Compliance Issues in Cloud and ways to overcome them

1. Data Security

Cloud services can be accessed via either private or public Internet connections. There are three main models. These are:

• IaaS – Storage, virtualization and network available as pay-as-you-go services.
• PaaS – Software and hardware packaged together and delivered via an Internet connection. Developers can then build and manage their applications.
• SaaS – Complete applications available as a service through a web browser.

Some organizations believe that the shared responsibility model implies that compliance responsibility is shared. It is important to remember that, while different service models have different security requirements, data security remains your responsibility. As a cloud customer, your business must take responsibility for compliance. Compliance is about protecting sensitive customer information.

Solution:

• Increased awareness: IT decision-makers must be aware that the organization is responsible for data security and compliance. This applies even if you are using cloud-based computing resources. Not only should key stakeholders be aware of their responsibility, but they also need to understand the regulations an organization must follow.
• Planning with compliance in mind: Keeping data security at the forefront of your cloud infrastructure decisions will make sure that it is not overlooked.

2. Diverse Cloud Implementations

Multi-cloud implementations are often possible due to the variety of cloud services offered by multiple providers. Flexera’s 2021 multi_cloud implementation can complicate the task of ensuring compliance.

Solution:

• Cloud Monitoring A cloud-monitoring platform or tool is able to provide the transparency and level of monitoring required to keep track and ensure compliance in a multi-cloud environment.
• Encryption – A multi-cloud configuration is vulnerable to unencrypted data during transit. It is crucial to ensure encryption of data at rest and data in motion.

3. Inadequate Access Controls

Inadequate access controls are responsible for any breaches of compliance regulations. This is often due to improper access controls.

Solution:

• IAM: A robust Identity and Access Management solution (IAM), that improves cloud security by giving you complete control over who and what access your data through a single dashboard.
• Fewer Privileges: Cloud system users should have access only to the information they require to perform their jobs. Limiting who has access to sensitive data, regardless of its storage location, is key to avoiding compliance issues.

4. Regulation Ambiguity or Overlap

Anybody who has been charged with understanding regulations and implementing them is well aware of the difficulty of ambiguity. This ambiguity is compounded by the fact that many regulations overlap and require compliance from multiple entities. Compliance fatigue can be caused by regulatory overlap and ambiguity. The cloud can exacerbate this fatigue.

Ironically, DSS requires that controls be “implemented in business-as-usual (BAU), activities as part of an entity’s overall security strategy.” IT stakeholders are naturally compelled to consider how to keep business as usual and comply with multiple regulations.

Solution:

• Limit scope: Not all data must comply with compliance requirements. To reduce compliance burdens across complex multi-cloud environments, it makes sense to store sensitive information in smaller systems and fewer locations.
• Automated Compliance: Automated Compliance Monitoring and Testing allow organizations to reduce compliance fatigue by automating the processes required to ensure data security.

Closing Thoughts

Cloud adoption can increase your compliance problems, but it does not have to be an obstacle to a successful implementation of the cloud. It is a good idea to be familiar with the major cloud compliance issues and potential solutions.