What is Application Governance?

What is Application Governance?

Application Governance refers to the set of processes, policies, and tools that organizations use to ensure that applications within their IT infrastructures are secure, adhere to compliance regulations, and properly managed throughout their lifecycle. Application Governance focuses on maintaining control over applications, how they are configured, who has access to them, and how they are used to align with organizational standards and business goals.

Application Governance ensures that organizations can manage risk, enforce compliance, and optimize both the performance and security of applications; whether they are on-premises or cloud-based.

Why Application Governance is Important

• Mitigates Risks: Applications often hold sensitive data and are frequent targets for cyberattacks. Application Governance reduces exposure to security risks.
• Ensures Compliance: Helps organizations meet industry standards, regulations, and internal security policies.
• Prevents Misconfigurations: Proper Application Governance identifies and remediates configuration errors that could expose vulnerabilities.
• Improves Visibility: Centralized management of applications provides better insights into their health, access, and usage.
• Optimizes Resource Use: Ensures applications perform efficiently, improving resource allocation and cost management.

The Key Objectives of Application Governance

• Security: Application Governance ensures applications are secure from vulnerabilities, unauthorized access, and misuse.
• Compliance: Enforce compliance with regulatory standards (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA) and internal security policies.
• Maintain Performance and Reliability: Ensure that applications in the IT infrastructure perform as required, are available to users with appropriate permissions, and stable in their environment.
• Access Control: Manage who can access applications and what they can do (e.g., roles and permissions) through models such as Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Attribute-Based Access Control (ABAC).
• Visibility: Provide a centralized view of applications, configurations, and user activity across the IT architecture.
• Efficiency: Streamline application provisioning and de-provisioning, updates, and lifecycle management.

Key Components of Application Governance

Access and Identity Management

Application Governance works with Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Cloud Infrastructure Entitlement Management (CIEM) tools to ensures organizations have a framework of business processes, policies and technologies in place that facilitate proper control over who can access applications and what permissions they have.

Policy Management

Define and enforce policies for security, compliance, and usage of applications and ensures compliance with organizational and regulatory requirements.

Application Lifecycle Management

Manage applications throughout their lifecycle: from design, deployment, maintenance, and eventual decommissioning.

Risk and Compliance Management

Identify and mitigate risks related to applications, such as misconfigurations, security vulnerabilities, and compliance violations.

Monitoring and Reporting

Continuously monitor application activity, performance, and security posture and generate reports to ensure compliance and improve decision-making.

Configuration Management

Control and monitor application configurations to prevent misconfigurations that could lead to security breaches or application performance issues.

Where Application Governance Works

• On-Premises Applications: Focuses on local access controls, performance monitoring, and patch management.
• Cloud-Hosted Applications (IaaS/PaaS): Application Governance adds visibility into cloud entitlements, configurations, and shared responsibility risks.
• SaaS Applications: Application Governance emphasizes managing user permissions, monitoring data flows, and ensuring compliance with vendor agreements.

Application Governance Versus IT Governance

IT Governance focuses broadly on managing all IT resources, including hardware, software, networks, and services, Application Governance specifically targets managing applications, their security, performance, and compliance. For example:

• Application Governance tools ensure the Principle of Least Privilege by limiting access to critical applications only to necessary users.
• Application Governance ensures an application complies with industry-specific data security and privacy regulations, such as HIPAA.
• Application Governance detects and fixes misconfigurations in cloud apps that hold public-facing sensitive data and prevents unauthorized data exposure.
• Application Governance monitors usage of “shadow IT” – unapproved SaaS-based applications used within the organization.

Where to Learn More

Application Governance ensures that organizations can secure, monitor, and optimize applications while staying compliant with policies and regulations. By implementing strong governance, businesses can reduce risks, improve efficiency, and ensure applications support their strategic goals effectively. Application Governance complements a strong SaaS-based Identity Governance and Administration (IGA) solution, like Omada Identity Cloud. Learn more.