Week 1: Cloud Computing Discovery to Compliance — A Day-by-Day Governance Kickstart

The InfraEdge | A CloudLattice Publication

This article outlines how CloudLattice helps enterprises kickstart hybrid and multi-cloud governance in just five days—by establishing visibility, auditing tagging and access, and aligning stakeholders around compliance and operational priorities.

Most enterprises know they need better cloud governance. But where to start? When you’re managing dozens of teams, hundreds of accounts, and multi-cloud workloads across Azure, AWS, and on-premises infrastructure, it's easy to feel overwhelmed.

At CloudLattice, our founder and principal consultant has developed a hands-on, five-week engagement model that helps organizations move from discovery to enforcement with clarity, consistency, and confidence. Week 1 is all about groundwork: surfacing what's already deployed, who owns it, and how it’s being governed.

Here’s how we guide enterprises through a high-value first week that sets the tone for sustainable hybrid and multi-cloud governance.

🔹 Day 1: Kickoff & Access Setup

We begin with a focused kickoff session involving key stakeholders from engineering, finance, and security.

What we do:

• Clarify governance goals (cost transparency, compliance enforcement, role clarity).

• Establish visibility by confirming audit-level access to Azure, AWS, and on-prem platforms like VMware or Kubernetes.

• Enable Azure Policy, Cost Management, and Log Analytics where not already configured.

🎯 Goal: Visibility and alignment on what success looks like.

🔹 Day 2: Cloud Inventory & Tagging Audit

We then take a snapshot of your cloud estate. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and this step reveals both technical sprawl and metadata inconsistencies.

Key Tools Used:

Azure Resource Graph (ARG)

powershell

Search-AzGraph -Query "Resources | project name, type, tags"

We export these results into CSV files, segmented by region and subscription/account, to identify:

• Untagged or inconsistently tagged assets

• Shadow IT patterns

• Resource concentration by team or region

  
  

🎯 Goal: Create a baseline of assets and metadata integrity.

🔹 Day 3: Current Governance & Identity Review

Next, we dive into how your policies and roles are currently being enforced—or bypassed.

In Microsoft Azure:

• Review built-in and custom Azure Policy assignments

• Audit role-based access control (RBAC) and custom role definitions

  
  

🎯 Goal: Map out governance blind spots and inconsistent access patterns.

🔹 Day 4: Hybrid Stack Evaluation with Azure Arc

Modern enterprises rarely operate in just one cloud. That's why hybrid governance is a priority.

We evaluate Azure Arc-connected resources—both servers and Kubernetes clusters—to assess:

• Policy coverage parity between cloud and on-prem

• Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Sentinel configuration

• Cross-cloud telemetry routing into centralized SIEM/log analytics

  
  

🎯 Goal: Extend governance reach beyond native Azure resources.

🔹 Day 5: Compliance Gaps & Stakeholder Interviews

Finally, we synthesize technical findings and layer in human context. We meet with engineering and finance stakeholders to:

• Prioritize governance gaps (e.g., missing data residency controls, lack of PCI tagging)

• Understand cross-functional friction points

• Capture ownership and accountability concerns

  
  

🎯 Goal: Align governance roadmap with business priorities and operating realities.

📈 The Payoff

By the end of Week 1, your team walks away with:

• A complete asset and tagging inventory

• A governance gap analysis across platforms

• Stakeholder buy-in to guide the rest of the engagement

  
  

This is not theory—it is real, repeatable, and grounded in what enterprise organizations actually need: clarity, enforcement, and collaboration across silos.

Want to apply this framework to your cloud estate? Let’s talk.

At CloudLattice, we deliver expert-led, hands-on governance that scales with your complexity and drives measurable results.

👉 Book a call or message us directly. We are here to help infrastructure start pulling its weight—for the business, not just the build pipeline.

About CloudLattice

CloudLattice empowers enterprise finance and technology leaders to scale governance across Microsoft Azure, and hybrid computing infrastructure. Led by Stuart Goings, we deliver hands-on implementation of policy automation, FinOps best practices, and cross-cloud reporting designed to reduce chaos and improve control.

Led by enterprise cloud computing consultant Stuart Goings, CloudLattice solutions that scale with complexity — and make governance practical again.

A Note on Trust:

The practices, frameworks, and examples described in this publication reflect the expertise and methodology developed by CloudLattice. While these services have not yet been implemented under the CloudLattice brand, they are grounded in years of hands-on experience in enterprise cloud architecture, automation, and governance. We are engaging with forward-thinking organizations ready to apply these solutions.