The Compliance Challenge For Cloud-First Enterprises

For quite some years, enterprises have been taking the cloud-first approach. They are replacing legacy systems with cloud-based applications and building cloud-native applications to the top of robust and flexible cloud infrastructure. These solutions are more sustainable, scalable, and cost-effective than on-premise ones. By 2025, the cloud computing market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 17.5% and amount to $832.1 billion.

However, there are a few compliance challenges that cloud-first enterprises face that slow the adoption process.

To begin with, enterprises are super-concerned about cloud security. The security policies that were built for legacy applications will almost certainly not be apt for cloud-based ones. As time has passed, cyberattacks have become more sophisticated too. There are also the GDPR and CCPA regulations that enterprises must consider while developing their applications.

Another challenge arises due to multi-cloud providers. Enterprises have limited information on where and how the data is stored and accessed. This could expose the enterprise’s data to vulnerabilities. Compliance can get even more complicated if the enterprise operates in multiple geographies. Different countries have different data security regulations, and they must adhere to them all.

There’s no doubt that enterprises need to evaluate their cloud service provider carefully. But the good news is that these challenges can be resolved with simple steps such as focused data governance and simplification and unification of data.

How To Strengthen Cloud Compliance?

1. Data Governance

Data governance is critical as it establishes the policies and frameworks that maintain data privacy, manage how the data is accessed, and help protect the enterprise from security vulnerabilities. However, as most enterprises use multi-cloud or public cloud for building applications, there’s less control over data governance and management. The governance protocols differ across cloud providers. To maintain compliance, enterprises need to bring consistency in governance.

They must form a data governance committee that would oversee the data governance practices, and define the governance rules that the enterprise must adhere to. They must also choose a cloud service provider that can adhere to the compliance mandate. Performing regular audits is critical to ensure that there are no gaps in compliance. These steps will ensure the safety of enterprise data on the cloud and enable them to optimize its value in their business.

2. Data security

In 2020, cloud cybersecurity attacks accounted for 20% of all cyberattacks. Although cloud service providers ensure top-notch security, the onus lies on the enterprise to evaluate and maintain the security posture throughout. Gartner predicts that by 2025, 99% of cloud security failures will be from the customer (enterprise) and not the cloud provider’s side. Hence, enterprises must audit their cloud assets and usage regularly to identify vulnerabilities and fix them before they snowball into a bigger risk.

Increased security awareness, a well-defined security framework, and a robust access management solution will help the enterprise build a secure and compliant cloud application. They must also ensure that the data is always encrypted to prevent breaches. Data security is not the responsibility of the cybersecurity team alone. There are tools to support the team to automate and mitigate risks on time. However, the enterprise must establish a few security best practices, train every employee to identify the risks, and alert the cybersecurity team to address the problem promptly.

3. Simplification and unification

As the data volume increases, enterprises have to deal with complex and fragmented data. These data sets are hard to consolidate and manage. A consolidated view of the data set is important from a compliance perspective to adhere to GDPR and other regulations. It also helps enterprises make data-driven decisions regarding security. There’s an urgent need for a solution that can help simplify and unify the data. IBM Cloud Pak™ for Data is one such solution that allows enterprises to gather all the data into a unified interface and simplify the data access across multi-cloud and on-premise data sources.

Let’s look at the example of SOCAR Turkey Enerji A.S, one of the world’s largest oil and natural gas companies. The company wanted to automate its processes and standardize and simplify its contract management processes. With the help of IBM Cloud Pak™ for Data, SOCAR Turkey migrated almost 500,000 documents into the solution and automated nearly 14,000 processes. The employee productivity increased by 20% to 30%. The automated and digitized business processes enabled the company to improve its document management and efficiently adhere to various regulations.

Conclusion

The cost implications of non-compliance are far higher than that of compliance. For example, a single CCPA violation could cost the enterprise up to $7500. HIPAA could penalize a healthcare enterprise with a fine of up to $1.5 million per year if they find a problem in even one record.

So, it’s extremely critical that enterprises prioritize cloud compliance, especially those belonging to a highly regulated industry like healthcare and finance. Enterprises must use solutions such as IBM Cloud Pak™ for Data to secure the cloud applications and make them compliance-ready.
They must work with an expert who can secure the data on the cloud and make it compliant.
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