Governance-Aware Infrastructure-as-Code for Regulated Research Environments

Abstract

Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) has turned the manner in which contemporary systems are supposed to be provisioned, especially in the cloud platform. But in controlled research settings, the implications of governance and compliance of IaC are not well understood. This paper suggests a governance-conscious IaC framework, which incorporates the necessary compliance validation, access control, and policy enforcement into the infrastructure definition. The framework enhances the auditability of IaC, minimizes unauthorized changes, and configuration drift by implementing governance mechanisms within IaC and maintaining a clear adherence to the regulatory standards. In this paper, the author will consider the use of the framework in biomedical research infrastructures, where strict compliance and governance are paramount. As the analysis has shown, compliance features enable the framework to not only improve consistency, but also make the control of security and operational policies in IaC environments easier. The framework also makes sure the cloud infrastructure meets the internal and external regulatory demands without losing the flexibility and efficiency of IaC. Also, this study demonstrates the wider applicability of such governance-conscious IaC frameworks to other regulated industries, such as health care and financial services. The research ends with the conclusion that the concept of governance into IaC is paramount to organizations operating in highly-regulated settings, which provides a solution that will automate the provisioning process and will keep the organization in compliance. The findings show that it is possible to balance the role of governance and automation to produce safe, operating, and effective infrastructure management protocols.