Organisations increasingly rely on cloud services to drive innovation and operational efficiency, and as more artificial intelligence (AI) workloads use public cloud-based AI acceleration, organisations’ AI strategies are linked to the security and availability of these services.
However, as John Bruce, chief information security officer (CISO) at Quorum Cyber, points out, CISOs face the persistent challenge of figuring out how to map a cloud provider’s service level agreement (SLA), which does not align with the enterprise’s security and availability requirements (see box: A strategic framework for SLA gap management).
Aditya Sood, vice-president of security engineering and AI strategy at Aryaka, says that while SLAs typically cover metrics like uptime, support response times and service performance, they often overlook critical elements such as data protection, breach response and regulatory compliance.
This, he says, creates a responsibility gap, where assumptions about who is accountable can lead to serious blind spots. For instance, a customer might assume that the cloud provider’s SLA guarantees data protection, only to realise that their own misconfigurations or weak identity management practices have led to a data breach.
“Organisations may mistakenly believe their provider handles more than it does, increasing the risk of non-compliance, security incidents and operational disruptions,” he says.
Sood recommends that IT decision-makers ensure they take into account the nuances between SLA commitments and shared security responsibilities. He believes this is vital for organisations to make the most of cloud services without undermining resilience or regulatory obligations.
In Bruce’s experience, misalignment of an SLA with corporate IT requirements is more common than many leaders realise. “Whether it’s a cutting-edge AI platform from a startup, specialised software as a service (SaaS) with limited security guarantees, or even established cloud providers whose standard SLAs fall short of regulatory requirements, the gap between what providers offer and what enterprises need can be substantial,” he says.
According to Bruce, the modern cloud ecosystem presents a complex landscape. He says: “While major cloud providers like AWS [Amazon Web Services], [Microsoft] Azure and Google Cloud have matured their security offerings and SLAs considerably, the broader ecosystem includes thousands of specialised providers.”
Bruce notes that while many offer innovative capabilities that can provide significant competitive advantages, their SLAs often reflect their size, maturity, or focus areas rather than enterprise security requirements.
For instance, IT decision-makers can face an innovation paradox. This occurs, says Bruce, if a promising AI or machine learning (ML) platform offers breakthrough capabilities but provides only basic security guarantees and 99.5% uptime commitments when the organisation requires 99.99% availability.
While an SLA guarantees the cloud provider’s commitment to “the security of the cloud”, ensuring the underlying infrastructure’s uptime, resilience and core security, in Sood’s experience, it explicitly does not cover the customer’s responsibilities for security in the cloud.
He says that even if a provider’s SLA promises 99.99% uptime for its infrastructure, a customer’s misconfigurations, weak identity management or unpatched applications can still lead to data breaches or service outages, effectively nullifying the perceived security and uptime benefits of the provider’s SLA.
Even if a provider’s SLA promises 99.99% uptime for its infrastructure, a customer’s misconfigurations, weak identity management or unpatched applications can still lead to data breaches or service outages
Another factor to consider is what Bruce calls the “compliance gap”. This is when the SaaS provider offers essential functionality, but its data residency, encryption or audit logging capabilities do not meet the regulatory requirements of the organisation.
Then there is the case of a service provider’s inability to scale to meet certain requirements needed by enterprise IT. This “scale mismatch”, as Bruce calls it, occurs in a situation where the specialised software house provides unique industry-specific tools, but its incident response procedures and security monitoring do not meet enterprise standards.
Sood recommends using a shared responsibility model (SRM), which plays a central role in defining how security and operational duties are split between cloud providers and their customers. The SRM directly impacts the adequate security and availability experienced by the enterprise, making diligent customer-side security practices crucial for realising the full value of any cloud SLA.
Public cloud lock-in
Beyond managing how responsibility for IT security is coordinated, IT leaders should also be wary of the extent to which they use the value-added services provided in a public cloud platform.
Bill McCluggage, former director of IT strategy and policy in the Cabinet Office and deputy government CIO from 2009 to 2012, says fewer than 1% of customers switch cloud providers annually, because the system is rigged.
For instance, egress fees to transfer data out of a public provider’s datacentre are opaque. McCluggage says that egress fees combined with proprietary application programming interfaces (APIs) and binding enterprise agreements often make the cost of switching public cloud providers too high.
“Beyond just stifling competition, this lock-in also undermines the UK government’s ambition to become an AI powerhouse. With AI workloads increasingly dependent on high-performance cloud infrastructure, continuing to rely on just two dominant hyperscalers risks concentrating capability, control and innovation in the hands of a few,” he says.
According to McCluggage, customers using certain public cloud services can face “economic entrapment”. As an example, Microsoft’s recent Office 365 Personal and Family subscriptions price increase in the UK – from £59.99 to £84.99 – was justified by the addition of AI-powered Copilot features.
“Customers can avoid the hike by choosing the ‘Classic’ subscription,” says McCluggage, pointing out that Microsoft has made this subscription much harder for people to find. “Most individuals – and organisations – won’t know they have a choice until it’s too late. This isn’t value creation,” he adds.
Being realistic about contract terms
The cloud ecosystem will continue to evolve, with new providers offering compelling capabilities alongside varying security guarantees. Quorum Cyber’s Bruce warns that attempting to eliminate all SLA gaps would mean forgoing potentially transformative technologies. Instead, he says, successful CISOs need to develop frameworks for making informed risk decisions that enable innovation while maintaining appropriate controls.
“By taking a structured approach to SLA gap management, organisations can access innovative cloud services while maintaining strong security postures and regulatory compliance,” says Bruce, for whom the key is moving beyond simple accept/reject decisions to sophisticated risk management that enables business objectives while protecting against genuine threats.
Organisations that develop mature approaches to SLA gap management will be best positioned to take advantage of these innovations while maintaining appropriate risk management standards.
Every technology decision involves risk trade-offs. Should IT make the most of new cloud and AI innovation, even if it may not fully meet corporate IT standards, or go with established public cloud providers where there is the potential of being locked in and facing the opaque egress fees that McCluggage refers to.
Aryaka’s Sood urges IT decision-makers to adopt proactive governance, risk and compliance (GRC) by updating the organisation’s internal security policies and procedures to account for the new cloud service and its specific risk profile. “Map the provider’s security controls and your compensating controls directly to relevant regulatory requirements,” he says.
Sood also suggests that IT leaders should ensure documentation of the organisation’s risk assessments, mitigation strategies and any formal risk acceptance decisions are meticulously managed.
By adopting these strategies, IT and security leaders can confidently embrace innovative cloud technologies, minimising inherent risks and ensuring a strong compliance posture, even when faced with SLAs that don’t initially meet all desired criteria.
With such measures and policies in place, IT decision-makers understand the risk and their mitigation strategies, which should put them in a better place to select the best AI and cloud innovations for their organisations. “The question isn’t whether to accept risk, but how to manage it intelligently in pursuit of business objectives,” says Bruce.
