Introduction
Cloud governance has entered a new era. The speed, sprawl, and scale of modern multi-cloud environments are pushing legacy operating models to their breaking point.
To maintain a high level of cloud performance and security, businesses need to get everything right when it comes to cloud-resource management. But the best strategy isn’t always straightforward: Cloud infrastructure and activities are picking up speed and getting more distributed than we’ve ever seen. Organizations are also undergoing major changes because of strategic moves like global capability center (GCC) outsourcing, mergers and acquisitions (M&A)—which increased 12% in 2024—and platform engineering initiatives.
Legacy governance frameworks can’t keep up. A modern cloud operating model – how an organization manages cloud resources – is now essential for scale and resilience.
That’s where this playbook comes in. Read on for a tried-and-true governance strategy, a practical five-layer operating model, and guidance on how to operationalize it using the right people, processes, and platforms.
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Why traditional cloud operating models fall short
What holds businesses back and keeps them reliant on legacy models? To start with, some still use single-cloud checklists in a multi-cloud world. While early cloud operating models helped enterprises transition to the cloud, most weren’t built for the frenetic multi-cloud environments we see today. They lack continuous governance, contextual visibility, and unification with delivery pipelines—essentials in today’s cloud-native terrain.
Next, there's the issue of compliance-only policy revocations, the result of treating cloud security and compliance as a box-ticking activity. Policies are created and enforced, but there's no feedback or evaluation of how they're performing. With cloud infrastructures mushrooming and threats evolving by the hour, stale policies are a ticking time bomb.
Unmeasured risk is another critical challenge. Too often, businesses lack deep, real-time, and contextual visibility into their cloud operations. Without this visibility, many businesses are fumbling around in the dark, even if they don't know it. And even if they're able to discover risks, there's no way to accurately understand the severity and criticality of that risk. We've said it before, and we'll say it again: Focusing on the wrong risks is a massive risk in and of itself.
So what does all this tell us about legacy cloud operating models? The verdict is that there’s no place in current cloud environments for siloed and fractured governance. Gartner says that more than 70% of enterprises will use the cloud to accelerate business initiatives by 2027. But this is only possible if legacy operating models and governance frameworks are retired. Moving forward, cloud governance needs to be continuous, contextual, and embedded into delivery.
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Pillars of cloud delivery and governance
Now that we’re on the same page about the pitfalls of traditional cloud security models, let’s take a look at what end-to-end cloud delivery and governance need to cover.
Here’s a three-pillar approach designed to support continuous governance across complex cloud environments:
| Pillar | What it covers | KPIs and metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Secure development | The secure development pillar focuses on addressing cloud security and governance as early as code. Core components include:
| Percentage of builds passing policy gates |
| Secure runtime posture | The runtime protection pillar is all about preventing cloud threats in real time. Core components include:
| Number of high-risk resources |
| Exploit detection and response | The detection and response pillar involves catching anomalous incidents before they mature into bigger security events. Core components include:
|
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Building blocks: People, processes, and platforms
In this section, we'll break down what it takes to build and continuously reinforce the pillars of cloud delivery and governance. Here are three important building blocks that will help drive your cloud governance initiative:
1. People
Though cutting-edge technology powers cloud governance, its real stewards are the cloud experts who operate across dedicated and cross-functional teams. Let’s take a look at some key cloud roles that are critical to boosting multi-cloud delivery and governance:
Platform engineers build and deliver cloud infrastructure to developers via internal development portals.
Site reliability engineers oversee and improve the reliability and operational health of cloud infrastructure across software delivery lifecycles.
DevSecOps teams introduce and embed security tools and processes into application development pipelines.
FinOps teams manage cloud expenses and resource consumption to boost business value.
2. Processes
People get work done in the cloud, but processes are what help them get it done right. Effective processes, aka processes without any performance bottlenecks or security vulnerabilities, are the key to smooth cloud governance.
Here are some methodologies that can help make cloud processes as effective as possible:
Product-based IT: An approach that treats cloud infrastructure and services as products, with clearly delineated ownership architectures and accountability
Change as code: A methodology that focuses on making, managing, and version controlling all cloud infrastructure and policy changes via code
Automated evidence collection: A system where forensic evidence and artifacts are continuously and automatically gathered for audits and analyses
3. Platforms
To guarantee strong cloud governance in complex environments, you need strong platforms. But remember: The best platforms don’t just host your cloud assets; they connect and orchestrate every moving part across your cloud estate.
When it comes to platforms, here are the components that should be on your radar:
IaC pipelines help developers and DevOps teams securely create, manage, and deploy IaC via automated and repeatable delivery workflows.
Kubernetes/serverless build, run, manage, and secure containerized applications across their entire lifecycle.
CNAPPs connect and consolidate everything from container and IaC security to tools like CSPM, CIEM, and CWPP. A CNAPP provides security context across identities, data, workloads, and infrastructure from development to runtime.
Five‑layer cloud operating model framework
In the last couple of sections, we’ve looked at the three pillars of cloud delivery and governance and the three building blocks needed to strengthen those pillars. Now let’s take a look at a five-layer framework to support your next-gen cloud operating model.
| Layer | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Strategy and policy |
|
| Platform foundations |
|
| Workload enablement |
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| Operations and SRE |
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| Governance and assurance |
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Continuous governance in multi-cloud environments
As organizations’ multi-cloud environments proliferate and scale at speed, continuous governance is the need of the hour. When you’re dealing with complex, multi-cloud environments, you need platform-agnostic management and enforcement capabilities, comprehensive visibility across the cloud’s most important pillars, and the right KPIs and metrics to measure success. Let’s unpack this.
Cross‑cloud control‑domain map
In multi-cloud environments, you need to be able to see and manage controls across heterogeneous cloud services. Specifically, you need complete single-pane visibility and management of the following:
Identities
Log collections
Networks
Data
Workloads
PaC engines
Policy-as-code engines are tools that can help you design, manage, and enforce policies at scale across cloud-native environments. Armed with these engines, you can more easily maintain a strong and stable cloud governance posture.
The best thing to do with PaC engines is to automate, test, and deploy policies across the software lifecycle, all the way from code to runtime environments. Here are a few tools that can help you do that:
OPA Gatekeeper
Terraform/Pulumi
Cloud Custodian
Also, remember that you don’t have to deal with tool siloes and sprawls. With the help of a CNAPP, all these tools can be unified and managed under one roof.
Drift detection loop
Configuration drift is always a major risk in multi-cloud environments with tons of ephemeral resources, high-octane workflows, and iterative changes. If drift gets out of hand, there’s an increased chance of compliance violations and cybersecurity incidents.
To prevent drift from introducing risk, you need automated detection and remediation mechanisms that track deviations from your defined baselines. You also need to be able to map configurations of deployed applications back to their code and automatically generate pull requests when required.
Metrics
Evaluating governance across complex cloud environments doesn’t have to be complicated. A simple hack is choosing the right metrics. With the right metrics, you’ll get an accurate and contextual understanding of the efficacy of your cloud governance program.
Here are some important metrics that can help you evaluate continuous governance:
MTTR (for critical misconfigurations)
Effective permission exposure reduction over time
Policy violation reoccurrence rate
Policy flood to guardrails
Staying on top of runaway or duplicated policies is one of the major headaches of cloud governance. When there are too many dormant, redundant, disconnected, and haphazardly organized policies, it can open the floodgates to numerous performance, security, and cloud compliance issues.
Instead of trying to navigate and mangle a messy tangle of policies, businesses need to embed and enforce policy guardrails across their cloud.
Actionable items:
Inventory and tag controls across cloud pillars and drop orphans
Refactor into OPA templates so that they’re platform-agnostic and ready for any cloud
Automate evidence
Executing a cloud governance framework with a CNAPP
Unifying cloud governance across multi-cloud environments is complex—but a modern CNAPP makes it achievable. By connecting governance layers from code to runtime, CNAPPs simplify visibility, enforcement, and risk reduction.
Top CNAPPs provide a unified asset graph, correlate controls, and feed both build‑time gates and runtime enforcement. To dial in your cloud governance framework, you need to keep an eye out for features like agentless multi‑cloud inventory, contextual prioritization, developer‑ready remediation workflows, and automated evidence exports, all of which are major parts of Wiz.
Many Wiz customers map graph nodes directly to their PaC repositories, closing the loop from design to enforcement and synchronizing their cloud infrastructure with their overarching governance objectives and guardrails. This setup helps reinforce cloud security mechanisms but also drives overall performance and delivery.
The major takeaway? A CNAPP like Wiz shouldn’t be seen solely as a security tool; it’s a security-driven strategic enabler, ideal for organizations with cloud-heavy architectures. Wiz CNAPP, along with the five-phase Cloud Security Maturity Model (CSMM), can help businesses build cloud resilience and strengthen their overall governance posture. Against a backdrop of strategic pivots like GCC outsourcing and M&A, this kind of holistic cloud governance can be a game-changer.
See how Wiz helps unify security and governance across your entire cloud. Get a demo to streamline policy enforcement, cut down risk, and drive delivery at scale.
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