Achieving Compliance in a Multi-Cloud World

By Calli Schlientz, Director of Compliance, DataBank

Compliance rarely drives the initial decision to move to the cloud. Organizations typically migrate for cost reduction, scalability, or operational efficiency. Compliance tends to be viewed as necessary but secondary.

Yet once the strategic decision to adopt cloud infrastructure is made, compliance becomes a critical differentiator. Organizations must choose which provider and deployment model best meets internal compliance processes and ultimately, regulatory requirements.

This decision creates immediate challenges for organizations transitioning from traditional on-premises infrastructure to the cloud. For example, in cloud partnerships, responsibility for compliance controls is divided between the customer and the provider through what’s known as the shared responsibility model. Security controls that the company once implemented and maintained now exist in hybrid frameworks where some responsibilities transfer to providers while others remain with customers.

Companies must reframe their understanding of compliance ownership, particularly when evaluating multiple cloud providers. Compliance processes and requirements may be handled differently by each vendor, leading to complex comparison challenges and potential issues down the road.

Critical Questions Organizations Should Ask

When evaluating cloud and infrastructure providers, organizations often struggle to know exactly what compliance questions to ask. Many companies understand they need “compliance” but aren’t sure how to evaluate whether a provider can deliver what they need. This uncertainty can lead to gaps in due diligence that create problems later.

The most important questions organizations should consider include:

• What are the provider’s current audit exceptions? Look beyond certifications to understand other areas of non-compliance that could impact your data security.
• How does the provider handle compliance gaps when they occur? The question isn’t whether issues will arise, but how transparently and effectively they’re managed.
• What specific compliance responsibilities will transfer to the provider versus remain with you? Get detailed documentation showing exactly who handles what under different regulatory frameworks.
• Can the provider participate directly in your compliance assessments? Beyond providing documentation, can they join auditor calls and provide real-time explanations of security controls?
• How quickly does the provider resolve compliance issues? Understanding remediation timelines helps you assess potential risks to your own compliance posture.

These questions help organizations move beyond surface-level compliance discussions to understand how partnerships will function during actual regulatory assessments and ongoing compliance management.

What Leading Partners Bring to Compliance

The most valuable infrastructure providers go beyond providing secure facilities. They offer comprehensive compliance frameworks—structured sets of security controls and procedures that meet regulatory standards. Organizations can inherit or build upon these frameworks, transforming compliance from a wholly internal challenge into collaborative effort.

Transparency forms the foundation of effective partnerships. Leading providers should offer valuable resources such as trust centers (centralized portals containing compliance documentation and audit reports) and responsibility matrices that clearly delineate which compliance requirements they handle versus which remain with customers.

These documents should be framework specific. For example, they should recognize that FedRAMP requirements differ significantly from PCI DSS or HIPAA obligations. Service descriptions should reflect this tailored approach, with providers offering different recommendations based on specific compliance objectives rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.

Public Cloud Compliance Challenges

While public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud offer extensive compliance certifications, they operate on fundamentally different models that can create challenges for organizations with specific regulatory requirements.

The challenge stems from how public cloud providers approach compliance. They build their frameworks to work for as many customers as possible, using a one-size-fits-all model.

This approach means organizations often get more compliance controls than they actually need while potentially missing specific requirements for their industry or regulatory environment. The standardized model can leave gaps for companies in heavily regulated sectors.

When Complexity Multiplies

While choosing the right provider helps address many compliance concerns, the complexity multiplies when organizations operate across multiple cloud environments. Many companies find themselves in multi-cloud scenarios due to acquisitions, specialized application requirements, or deliberate risk mitigation strategies that distribute workloads across different providers.

Each additional cloud environment introduces new compliance variables that compound the challenge. What appears straightforward with a single provider becomes exponentially more difficult when coordinated across multiple providers, each with different frameworks, documentation standards, and support models.

Different providers may handle identical compliance requirements through entirely different mechanisms, creating potential coverage gaps or unnecessary overlaps that waste resources. Organizations often discover these inconsistencies only during compliance assessments or when responding to security incidents that span multiple environments.

The Colocation Alternative

Instead of accepting these limitations, organizations can turn to colocation providers with comprehensive managed services that offer significant compliance advantages over both traditional hands-off models and public cloud approaches.

In these cases, colocation partners can assume substantial compliance responsibilities that would otherwise require dedicated internal expertise, including deploying pre-hardened operating systems, maintaining security patches, and managing ongoing compliance monitoring.

More importantly, colocation operators can customize solutions to address specific regulatory requirements rather than offering generic frameworks. This might mean tailored vulnerability scanning for PCI compliance or specialized background check requirements for criminal justice systems.

During compliance assessments, these providers can participate directly in auditor calls and provide real-time explanations of security controls, rather than simply directing customers to documentation or self-service portals.

For organizations already operating in multi-cloud environments, colocation providers can serve as a unifying platform that simplifies compliance management. Rather than maintaining separate compliance documentation and audit processes across multiple public cloud providers, organizations can consolidate workloads or use colocation as a compliance-consistent hub for hybrid architectures.

Partnership in Practice: A Federal Agency Case Study

The value of choosing the right compliance partner becomes clear through long-term relationships that evolve alongside changing regulatory requirements.

Consider the example of a federal agency that engaged with us before achieving their FedRAMP authority to operate (ATO), the formal approval required for government systems to process federal data.

This partnership began years before the agency secured compliance authorization, with us actively participating in audit calls, adjusting configuration settings based on auditor feedback, and redeploying test and production environments as requirements evolved. When the agency needed to migrate to our updated FedRAMP Rev. 5 environment, the transition was handled as a joint project rather than a vendor handoff.

The ultimate validation came when the customer’s agency granted authority to operate using the implemented and inherited controls, creating a shared compliance framework where both parties validated each other’s security controls. This demonstrates how compliance relationships can evolve from vendor-customer transactions into strategic collaborations that benefit both parties.

The Evolution of Compliance: What’s Coming Next

The compliance landscape is changing in two key ways. Organizations can expect new regulations targeting emerging technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, as regulators work to keep up with rapid technological changes.

More importantly, the industry is moving away from traditional annual audit cycles toward continuous compliance monitoring. Forward-thinking providers are already conducting audits throughout the year rather than concentrating everything into single periods. This approach makes more sense since compliance issues can arise anytime, not just during scheduled audit windows.

Privacy regulations are also expanding. While GDPR transformed data protection in Europe, comprehensive federal privacy legislation in the United States remains stalled. Meanwhile, individual states continue implementing their own privacy laws, creating a complex patchwork that will likely push federal lawmakers to act.

Building Resilient Compliance Strategies

Successfully managing compliance across multiple cloud environments comes down to choosing strategic partners who understand how modern infrastructure connects. Organizations that tackle shared responsibility challenges proactively and design systems that streamline audit processes position themselves better for both current requirements and future changes.

The key is thoughtful planning and selecting partners who have deep compliance expertise. Multi-cloud environments don’t have to compromise compliance, but they do require careful coordination and providers who know how to manage complexity effectively.