Cloud Services For Dummies, IBM Limited Edition  52 Think about the Service Level Agreement (SLA) for how and  what services are provisioned. This can be complicated  because your service provider may be giving you access to a  virtualized image that you have little control over. The next  time you work with a service, you may be provisioned a different image. This makes the issues of monitoring the service level complicated and difficult to track. There are  issues that are more straightforward that you can monitor.  Make sure you can access the following: Service-level decisions are always about tuning the environ- ment to the business purpose. It’s not sufficient to measure  and monitor the performance of servers, networks, or virtual- ized images as individual components of your environment.  You need to understand how they all work together to meet  business objectives. In addition, you need to establish a pro- cess for monitoring and managing service levels that includes  an awareness of the relative business priority of each of the  business services supported by the environment. One of the first steps in creating a secure and reliable IT computing environment or cloud-computing environment  is to assess your risks. At the end of the day, you’re responsible  for security of the services you deliver to your customers,  whether they’re delivered from your on-premises servers or  utilizing a third-party cloud provider. These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any  dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited. Developing a Secure, Accountable,  and Reliable Cloud Environment ✓ A dashboard that provides you with insights across the applications and services that are running in your  server rooms and those that are running in the cloud.  This dashboard should include a way to monitor when applications are running and whether there are incidents  or problems. ✓ An SLA across your own services and those provided  by cloud providers to get a true picture of the services  you’re providing to your internal and external customers  Ask your service provider what kind of visibility you  have from its systems. Then, determine the level of risk  you’re willing to take in terms of what you can’t see.