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A Comprehensive Guide to Cloud Security Compliance

By Mike Bennett 25 March 2025 8 min read

Without an established, monitored, and implemented control system and strategy, it is difficult to maintain a level of cloud security compliance that, in some cases, is required by law and regulation. Organisations have a responsibility to their employees, customers, and partners to ensure that cloud resources are consumed responsibly and in line with regulatory requirements.

In this blog, we’ll look at common challenges you may face around cloud compliance and best practices for achieving it.

What is Cloud Security Compliance?

Cloud security compliance refers to the adherence to controls, standards, policies and procedures within an organisation for the goal of achieving better security posture for the cloud environment.

Many organisations will adopt standardised regulatory definitions of cloud security compliance, such as GDPR or Data Protection Act 2018, with the aim of achieving the goals and objectives set out within these regulations. GDPR and Data Protection Act 2018 are both examples of regulations stipulated by law, but there are other regulations you may need to comply with if your organisation works within specific sectors, regions, or otherwise needs to hold itself to a higher standard of cloud security. They could include stipulations on how long data is retained for, the level of encryption required for certain types of information and even the security clearance level of administrators of data held by the business.

Organisations that operate across different regions may also have to consider several jurisdictions and, as such, have to comply with a hybridised version which is compliant with multiple regulatory bodies.

The Shared Responsibility Model for Cloud Security and Compliance

Securing cloud environments is a responsibility shared between the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) and the customer consuming cloud resources. This responsibility can shift towards either party depending on the level of service provided.

When considering Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, for example, the vast majority of responsibility will be held by the CSP with the customer only being responsible for data, presentation and users. This is in stark contrast to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), where the customer is responsible for the operating system, service and above, with the CSP generally only being responsible for virtualisation and physical hardware.

This division of responsibility puts emphasis on your organisation to do its due diligence and stringently review and adhere to CSP policies and procedures. In addition, your organisation must ensure they are fully aware of where the line of responsibility is.

It is important that due diligence is undertaken as failure to comply with legal requirements and compliance can incur substantial fines and consequences to businesses. In addition, the consumer of cloud services is always responsible for ensuring that their use of the platform is in line with their requirements. Although the CSP is responsible for some elements ultimately, it is the responsibility of the organisation to ensure that the platform is fit for purpose.

Challenges of Cloud Compliance

Some of the challenges facing cloud compliance directly relate to the benefits of adopting cloud infrastructure and practices. Data residence is a significant challenge due to the transient nature of the modern workforce and the availability and elasticity of cloud services.

Many geographical locations have certain regulations and standards which information and data are held to. This can change depending on the location(s) that your business operates in and is made increasingly difficult to manage when your organisation operates in multiple locations.

This is exacerbated by the innate ability of cloud solutions to scale outwards and host information all over the world. As a result, it is imperative that you have a defined policy and process for managing, administering and retaining data and information. This is expensive to incorporate in day-to-day operations and increases the need for dedicated, technical resources.

Cloud Security Compliance Best Practices

Adhering to current best practices is essential to achieving and maintaining compliance. Many CSPs have documentation outlining their recommendations when it comes to securing information and data. Below are just some of the ways you can improve your security posture by achieving cloud security compliance:

Assess the Risk of Information Stored in the Cloud

It is imperative for your organisation to understand the data and information that is being stored in the cloud. Data can be extremely sensitive to the individual it pertains to and, as such, it is the responsibility of the organisation hosting this data to ensure it is secure.

You must have a robust process in place for assigning risk management and mitigations to data, and ensure that what is hosted is handled appropriately. In essence, you must know what the outcome is if data hosted is mishandled, lost or manipulated and how this effects the individual, the business and the parties involved.

Develop Policies for Sharing Information to the Cloud

Sharing information is increasingly common, yet it’s rare for it to be hosted in a static environment. This makes it increasingly difficult to protect data both when transiting and at rest as it is difficult to retain information in a single source. The premise of sharing this information can also vary depending on the technologies and systems in play.

To ensure the safety of this information, it’s vital that you develop clear and concise policies for sharing information. These policies must be embedded in the culture of the business, which can take the form of processes and procedures that are delivered through training and technical controls such as Data Loss Prevention (DLP), sensitivity labelling, and encryption in transit.

Review Cloud Service Provider’s Security Policies and Procedures

Due to the shared responsibility of security when leveraging cloud services and solutions, you must ensure that you understands the policies and procedures of the hosting platform. A clear delineation of responsibility must be understood to prevent gaps developing in the security strategy of the organisation.

Backup and Encrypt Your Data

With ransomware being one of the most prominent threats across the world, it is vital that you adopt effective measures to backup and encrypt critical data. In some cases, ransomware can seem unavoidable, however, good data hygiene and management can increase the likelihood of your organisation recovering in a timely manner with minimal outage.

There are many solutions available for the majority of cloud platforms, especially the main three: Azure, AWS and GCP. The use of native solutions and third party tools can mitigate the burden of administration by providing monitoring, automation and management of backups and encryption at rest.

Continuous Compliance Monitoring

Monitoring and analytics play an important role in ensuring that all controls put in place to secure data are adhered to. Organisations invest large amounts of money and time in producing robust systems and controls to ensure data is handled appropriately. Lapses in these controls can occur and without robust compliance monitoring they can lead to breaches, loss of data and ultimately loss of revenue for businesses.

Many cloud service providers offer native, built-in monitoring solutions and, in addition to this, many third parties offer tools and services that can “plug-in” to the majority of. Ensuring monitoring is handled properly can help prevent lapses in data handling and should be adopted, administered and matured appropriately.

Vendor Management

Most organisations are likely to have multiple partners that play a role in their success and day to day business. In a cloud environment, these partners often become an extension of your organisation through Business-to-Business collaboration, identity resourcing and cross-tenancy implementations.

As such, it is the responsibility of the hosting organisation to ensure that robust security processes and controls are extended to their vendors and partners. This can help mitigate potential disparities between the hosting organisation and partner, and ensure that your efforts in securing your cloud ecosystem are not undermined.

Data Residency Awareness

Data residency is an important aspect of cloud security due to the transient nature of the modern workforce as well as the inherent availability of cloud services. In addition to this, many organisations operate in multiple environments which can introduce compliance requirements for several regulatory bodies across geolocations.

As such, it is vital that you know where your data resides, what regulations it has to meet, and where the flow of data presides.

Documentation and Reporting

Robust documentation and reporting systems can assist you in ensuring that the technical controls implemented to provide cloud security compliance are measured and assured. In addition, this training is much easier to offer to employees when the policies and procedures are clearly documented. Organisations should ensure that reporting is effective and timely to ensure that that technical controls are not undermined.