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Many industries have their own standards when it comes to protecting data. From finance and healthcare to pharmaceuticals, every industry has created certain regulations that are designed to protect consumer data and comply with state and federal laws. When cloud computing was introduced, there was a lot of anxiety around whether this new platform would be able to offer the same security and allow businesses to meet compliance standards. Over time, new security tools and protocols have been introduced that have made cloud-based systems more secure and efficient than ever before. Many of these advances and the current state of cloud computing can be attributed to cloud validation. Keep reading to learn more about cloud validation and why it matters. The Need for Cloud Validation Essentially, cloud validation means that you design an environment, test whether it works as intended, and record the results of the test. For industries with evolving compliance standards and regulations, continuous validation will be necessary in order to ensure that the cloud has adapted to new circumstances. Ideally, you will experience consistent results so that you can feel confident that your cloud system is working as designed and can continue to keep pace with changes. While you could leave the validation and revalidation process up to developers, this approach can create some potential problems. Placing validation in the hands of one individual or a small team of IT professionals can slow down the entire process. You may have to push out changes faster than they are able to manually deploy. In addition, this approach leaves room for security vulnerabilities and human error. The Basics of Cloud Validation A better and more efficient method is to create a cloud validation framework where you can automate most aspects of the validation process. This not only speeds up validation and deployment, but it also improves security. When it comes to validation, here are the basic elements that should be in place: Unit testing: it is important to compliance test individual resources to make sure all the configurations are correct and under compliance 1- Basic functionality testing. The cloud system should be validated to make sure that it is being used as intended. This is especially important and changes are made. 2- Risk mitigation. It is important to be aware of risks that are specific to your industry and those that may have already been identified and outlined by regulatory agencies. Once you have a clear understanding of existing risks, you can validate the cloud against these threats. 3- Effective change controls. A well-designed cloud system will allow you to validate certain areas as they are updated so that you don’t necessarily have to revalidate the entire system. These change controls provide better management tools so that you can ensure continuous compliance even as the system continues to change and evolve. 4- These basic elements play an important role across all industries and should be prioritized during the validation process. Businesses can then continue to customize the validation process as needed. With the right cloud validation system in place, you don’t have to be afraid of change. You can continue to update and improve your system without worry about causing problems, creating vulnerabilities, or running into compliance issues. Cloud validation is the tool that will allow you to continue to adapt without skipping a beat as regulations evolve. If you would like to learn more about cloud validation and why it matters to your business, contact the team at prancer. We can help answer all your questions and launch your validation project.