Effective governance in platform engineering involves transitioning from ad hoc, manual processes to more structured and proactive frameworks. This article explores the stages of governance proficiency, focusing on defining and implementing security, compliance, and remediation policies, monitoring threats, and managing access controls.
Focus areas include defining and implementing security, compliance, and remediation policies and frameworks, monitoring threats and implementing corrective actions, and managing control access to platforms.
Independent
The organization begins with ad hoc governance, relying on basic, manual processes to ensure compliance. Governance is often enforced through centralized control and manual gatekeeping. Developers and security teams operate independently, leading to minimal collaboration and a reliance on manual reviews and approvals. As a result, policy violations and unauthorized access are typically addressed reactively, leaving the organization exposed to risks that could have been mitigated more proactively. The reliance on manual controls creates challenges in building a more scalable and sustainable governance framework.
Define security, compliance and remediation policies and frameworks: A central governance team defines security and compliance measures for each team/project individually.
Implement security and compliance policies: Compliance is achieved by meeting essential standards without formal processes. Security measures, including identity and secret management, are added manually as an afterthought.
Monitor threats and violations and implement corrective actions: Respond to incidents after they occur, no formal processes to
prevent policy violations or security breaches.
Manage and control access to platform resources: Permissions are granted based on immediate needs.
Documented
As the organization begins to recognize the need for more consistency, efforts are made to document and share security and compliance policies across teams. However, these policies remain basic and are often applied unevenly. Development teams are expected to follow the policies that are provided to them. Centralized systems, like ticketing, are introduced to manage policy reviews, but this approach can introduce bottlenecks, as manual audits and reviews add overhead and may slow down development and deployment cycles.
The move towards a documented governance structure brings initial improvements in traceability and control, but the absence of uniformity and enforcement limits the effectiveness of these measures. Standard roles and permissions are established but not comprehensively enforced.
Define security, compliance and remediation policies and frameworks: Some common tools for identity and secret management are introduced for consistency, but policy creation is still largely manual
and lacks uniformity. These policies begin to be documented and shared across teams, but they're still rudimentary.
Implement security and compliance policies: A central governance team manually applies policies during key stages of the development lifecycle, with some efforts made to standardize this integration across teams.
Monitor threats and violations and implement corrective actions: Basic auditing processes are established for some key areas.
Manage and control access to platform resources: Some standard roles and permissions are established, but may not
cover all scenarios. Access control processes
Standardized
The organization shifts towards centralization to reduce variability and improve operational efficiency. Standardized governance processes are introduced, leading to more consistent application of security and compliance measures across all teams. This stage requires significant coordination and expertise, particularly in adopting Infrastructure as Code (IaC) practices. While these efforts are laying the groundwork for a more streamlined operation, the challenge lies in ensuring that all teams adhere to the standardized practices, which can be resource-intensive and complex to implement. Development teams given limited ability to directly make changes to the policies.
Define security, compliance and remediation policies and frameworks: Policies are standardized and centrally managed. Centralized documentation and control mechanisms are established.
Implement security and compliance policies: Policy implementation is centrally managed with some automation in place via a review and/or ticketing process.
Monitor threats and violations and implement corrective actions: Monitoring processes are defined and applied systematically across the organization, with a focus on ensuring that key governance and security standards are upheld. Regular auditing of all platform activities.
Manage and control access to platform resources: Access control is centralized and automated, with a formal RBAC system defining roles and permissions aligned with job functions.
Integrated
The organization achieves a more mature governance model by fully integrating security and compliance into its workflows. Automation becomes a key enabler, allowing policies to be consistently applied and updated across multiple systems and teams. The focus shifts from simply maintaining compliance to actively preventing gaps and overlaps in governance. Advanced tools and real-time analytics are deployed to monitor activities, enabling quick responses to potential threats. This level of maturity provides a scalable framework that minimizes vulnerabilities, but it also requires ongoing effort to maintain alignment across the organization.
Define security, compliance and remediation policies and frameworks: Policies are regularly reviewed and refined based on feedback and operational needs.
Implement security and compliance policies: Security and compliance policies are systematically integrated into
reusable templates and workflows (Policy as code), particularly during the initial setup phase, to ensure consistent application across all projects (example: start right templates). These policies are embedded into CI/CD pipelines, guaranteeing consistent
enforcement throughout the development and deployment processes. Automated policy checks further reinforce governance, maintaining compliance and security standards throughout the project lifecycle (example: stay right templates).
Monitor threats and violations and implement corrective actions: Advanced tools and analytics are used to monitor platform activities in real-time, enabling quick detection and response to threats and violations.
Manage and control access to platform resources: Policies enforce least privilege, with automated access reviews. A
comprehensive IAM system integrates with HR and enterprise tools to automatically align access rights with organizational changes.
Predictive
At the highest level of maturity, the organization embraces a proactive governance approach, using predictive analytics to
anticipate and mitigate risks before they materialize. Governance policies are continuously refined based on real-time feedback and changing operational needs, ensuring that they remain effective in a dynamic environment. The organization balances centralized control with adaptive, context-aware access management, allowing teams to operate autonomously while maintaining strict security standards. This advanced governance model positions the organization to stay ahead of potential threats and continuously optimize its security posture, but it demands a highly agile and responsive system capable of evolving with the organization’s needs.
The platform provides developers with the flexibility to customize their environments and compliance settings, empowering them to
work efficiently. At the same time, offering predefined compliance options ensures that organizational standards are met. This balance between flexibility and control enables developers to tailor their workflows to specific project needs while adhering to necessary regulatory requirements.
Define security, compliance and remediation policies and frameworks: Policies are continuously refined and optimized based on advanced analytics and predictive feedback.
Implement security and compliance policies: Get right campaigns are launched to ensure existing applications align with current best practices.
Monitor threats and violations and implement corrective actions: The platform uses predictive analytics to identify potential threats before they materialize, allowing the organization to mitigate risks proactively.
Manage and control access to platform resources: The organization implements adaptive, context-aware access control that dynamically adjusts permissions based on real-time factors such as user behavior, location, and time of access.