The landscape from above: Continuous cloud monitoring for continuous assurance

The concept of monitoring information system security has long been recognised as sound and valuable management practice. For additional consideration, a large portion of compliance requirements for information security and privacy are supported by such monitoring. Security programmes must be aligned with privacy and compliance programmes to ensure those areas of data protection compliance are appropriately met and monitored, and then actions based on maturity levels must be aligned with information assurance programmes. Some key areas to consider in information security programmes include: 1) Continuous assurance (full data life cycle, continuous monitoring, continuous awareness, continuous compliance, challenges, benefits); 2) continuous supply chain management (continuous vendor management and oversight, benefits, challenges); 3) continuous cloud assurance (private cloud, community cloud, public cloud, hybrid cloud); and 4) continuous improvement (what is involved and necessary, including actions, monitoring and metrics). This paper posits that organisations, building out their digital transformation strategies, must think strategically about the way in which they manage privacy compliance in the cloud, committing to a data-driven continuous assurance privacy programme which would provide a more robust compliance posture.