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GOVERNANCE AND SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT ISSUES IN A CLOUD COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT

The cloud computing environment provides for a new type of systems architecture. One key issue for a cloud computing client organization is to provide governance for data that it no longer directly controls. This paper identifies an initial set of guidelines to assist client organizations in defining governance plans for data they may choose to move to a cloud vendor. The client agency needs to ensure that data entrusted to outside resources is held to the same high standards as if the data were controlled internally. If there is a breach of security the vendor company may be legally responsible but the client agency may suffer the effects as well. The client agency needs to understand how its business practices will ensure compliance with industry standards such as HIPAA, PCI, and ITIL. Standard contractual arrangements such as service level agreements, confidentiality agreements, and PCI audits, among others, need to be extended to incorporate issues with hosting data in a cloud. This paper will investigate current research, and evaluate a cloud computing study that identifies proposed SLA attributes.