Cloudware Security - Guide to Cloud Computing for Business and Technology Managers - page 393

19
Cloudware Security
19.1 Governance
We have seen a number of factors that need to be considered when think-
ing about a move to a cloud infrastructure. The number of potential issues
arising from neglecting any aspect of cloud security is large, and the impli-
cations can be catastrophic. While some of the items are mostly applicable
during the preparation for a switchover to cloud, many of the pertinent
activities remain afterward and require careful management. It is the overall
management of the business assets that should provide the focus for how
security (among other things) should be considered, and this management is
generally referred to as governance.
Governance is oft-talked about in the context of corporate governance,
rules, practices, customs, policies, and processes, which define and steer how
an organization conducts its daily business. Typically, the act of governance
results in two key functions:
1. Providing defined chains of authority, responsibility, and communi-
cation to empower the appropriate staff to take decisions
2. Defining mechanisms for policy and control, together with the asso-
ciated measurements, to facilitate roles for staff to undertake
As you would expect, corporate governance is all encompassing when it
comes to the operations, strategy, and future trajectory of an organization. It
has tended to have been regarded as applicable to more traditional demarca-
tions within business, such as the accounting, sales, human resource man-
agement, or production functions, to name a few. However, as we have seen
in this topic and in Chapter 9 speciically (Enterprise Cloud Computing),
the opportunities created by consuming IT as a utility have the potential to
completely transform how business is conducted.
As such, there is emerging recognition that the impact of IT on a business
is crucial to its survival, and as more and more legislative and policy controls
now assume the use of IT, the need to govern the IT function is now para-
mount. As we have found elsewhere in this topic, cloud computing presents
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