Cloud Governance
Cloud Governance Tools - Key Features & 8 Tools to Know in 2025
What Are Cloud Governance Tools? #
Cloud governance tools help organizations manage and control their cloud environments, ensuring security, compliance, cost optimization, and efficient resource utilization. These tools can automate policy enforcement, monitor resource usage, manage access, and provide visibility into cloud spending. Examples include cloud management platforms, FinOps tools, and security governance solutions.
The adoption of cloud governance tools has become critical as organizations scale cloud usage. Without governance, organizations face issues like uncontrolled costs, security gaps, and regulatory non-compliance. These tools provide automated mechanisms for enforcing company-specific policies and ensure that changes are systematically tracked and analyzed.
Key benefits of using cloud governance tools include:
- Improved security: Enforce security policies, manage access, and monitor for threats to protect sensitive data and resources.
- Enhanced compliance: Ensure adherence to regulatory requirements and industry standards through automated policy enforcement and audit trails.
- Reduced costs: Optimize resource utilization, identify cost-saving opportunities, and prevent overspending on cloud services.
- Increased efficiency: Automate tasks, simplify workflows, and improve the overall management of cloud resources.
- Better visibility: Gain insights into cloud usage, spending, and performance to make informed decisions.
In this article:
Key Features of Cloud Governance Tools
Notable Cloud Governance Tools
CloudQuery
ManageEngine Identity360
CloudKeeper
Informatica Axon
ManageIQ
IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog
Egnyte
Talend
Key Features of Cloud Governance Tools #
Multi-Cloud Visibility and Control #
Multi-cloud visibility and control are critical features for organizations using services from multiple cloud providers. Cloud governance tools aggregate data from AWS, Azure, GCP, and other platforms, offering a unified view of all assets, configurations, and activities. This removes the need to manage each environment separately, saving time and minimizing the risk of oversight.
Centralized control enables organizations to implement policies consistently across different cloud services. Most tools provide cross-cloud automation, standardized workflows, and policy templates that adapt to varying provider architectures. With these features in place, organizations gain consistent governance, reduce silos, and simplify management complexities in multi-cloud operations.
Compliance and Risk Assessment #
Built-in compliance and risk assessment engines allow organizations to continuously track adherence to regulatory requirements and corporate policies. These tools automate the validation of cloud configurations against regulatory benchmarks or internal standards. As a result, organizations receive constant updates on compliance posture and immediate alerts for any deviations.
Risk assessment features often include vulnerability scans, misconfiguration checks, and scoring systems that rate exposure levels. This actionable intelligence enables prompt remediation efforts and effective prioritization of security resources. In regulated industries, automated compliance and risk management are essential for maintaining trust and avoiding operational or legal consequences.
Cost Optimization and FinOps #
Cost optimization and FinOps capabilities help organizations monitor and manage cloud spending in real time. Cloud governance tools analyze resource allocation, utilization rates, and spending patterns, offering recommendations for rightsizing, purchasing commitments, or decommissioning idle resources. Budgeting and forecasting functionalities further improve financial discipline.
These tools often integrate with accounting systems and can enforce policies such as automated shutdown of unused resources or alerting when spending exceeds limits. By aligning financial and technical teams, FinOps features help organizations maximize ROI and avoid budget overruns. The ability to break down costs by department or project also ensures accountability.
Security Posture Management #
Security posture management features provide continuous oversight of cloud configurations, policies, and activities. Cloud governance tools evaluate cloud environments for adherence to security best practices and issue real-time alerts for deviations. Common capabilities include automated compliance checks, vulnerability scans, and the management of encryption or access controls.
They also track metrics such as failed login attempts, unpatched systems, and compliance drift, allowing organizations to stay ahead of emerging threats. These capabilities help prioritize vulnerability remediation and ensure ongoing alignment with evolving security expectations.
Policy-Based Governance #
Policy-based governance enables organizations to define and enforce rules consistently across cloud environments. Policies can control access, enforce tagging standards, manage data retention, and restrict certain types of resource deployments. Automated policy enforcement reduces manual oversight and ensures swift response to violations.
Cloud governance platforms typically offer libraries of customizable policy templates that align with best practices and regulatory standards. The tools monitor environments for compliance with these rules and provide audit trails for all policy-related actions. This approach standardizes cloud management, simplifies audits, and reduces risk from inconsistent practices.
Notable Cloud Governance Tools #
1. CloudQuery #
CloudQuery is a CLI-first platform that makes it easy for companies to build bespoke cloud governance platforms in single cloud or complex multi-cloud environments. It offers a range of plugins, making it easy to import data from AWS, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and Microsoft Azure. The CloudQuery approach means that data never leaves your environment, providing maximum security for critical cloud data.
Key features include:
- On-prem support: CloudQuery can be run on your own infrastructure without the need to set up a complex, bespoke server. This makes it quick to get up and running and protects private data.
- SQL-based querying: CloudQuery uses standard SQL-based querying, meaning the learning curve is easier than many competing tools.
- Plugin-based architecture and API: CloudQuery uses integrations to extract and load data and offers an API, making it possible to create new plugins for custom tools.
- MCP-server support: CloudQuery's MCP server support makes it possible to ask questions about cloud infrastructure using natural language.
2. ManageEngine Identity360 #
ManageEngine Identity360 is an identity governance and administration (IGA) tool to simplify identity and access management (IAM) across hybrid Active Directory (AD) environments. It integrates with Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and other enterprise systems to simplify user provisioning, access management, and off-boarding processes.
Key features include:
- AD management: Centralized administration for managing users, groups, and policies across Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and Google Workspace.
- Automated user provisioning and off-boarding: Simplifies the process of onboarding, moving, and off-boarding users by automating access management workflows.
- Reporting: Provides purpose-built reports to gain insights into AD activities, identity risks, and compliance status.
- High-level automation: Automates AD cleanup, user creation, and access revocation with webhooks and orchestration templates.
- Approval-based workflow: Implements multi-level approval processes for AD tasks.
3. CloudKeeper #
CloudKeeper is a cloud cost optimization platform that combines consulting, analytics, and optimization techniques to help organizations reduce their cloud spending and maximize the value of their cloud environments. Specializing in AWS and Google Cloud, it provides cost visibility, resource optimization, and consulting support.
Key features include:
- Cost optimization and rate discounts: Helps secure discounts on services like Compute, RDS, CloudFront, and AWS support, while managing long-term Reserved Instances (RIs) and Savings Plans.
- Usage optimization: Optimizes resource allocation to match cloud workloads with automated and manual policies.
- Cloud consulting and support: Provides continuous personalized support from certified cloud experts, offering Well-Architected Reviews, cost audits, and architectural consulting services.
- Cloud cost visibility platform: Offers resource-level cloud cost visibility through custom dashboards, cost anomaly detection, and alerts.
- Cloud cost allocation and tagging: Features tools for cost allocation, chargeback, and tagging.
4. Informatica Axon #
Informatica Axon is a data governance platform that helps organizations to manage, share, and curate trusted data across the enterprise. It enables data stewards to take ownership of data quality and compliance while ensuring that the right data is accessible to the right people at the right time.
Key features include:
- Collaborative data governance: Supports team-based governance, enabling stakeholders to share trusted data across the organization.
- Data stewardship improvement: Provides data stewards with access to relevant data.
- AI-driven automation: Uses artificial intelligence to automate and simplify the process of finding and accessing data.
- Data marketplace: Offers a data marketplace where teams can easily find, understand, and access the data they need.
- Data connections and dependency mapping: Enables users to define data connections, identify gaps in data flow, and link governance policies to the affected data items.
5. ManageIQ #
ManageIQ is a hybrid IT management platform that provides visibility, control, and optimization across IT infrastructure. It enables organizations to manage a variety of resources, including containers, virtual machines, networks, and storage, from one platform.
Key features include:
- Continuous discovery: Connects to virtualization, container, network, and storage management systems, discovering inventory, mapping relationships, and tracking changes.
- Self-service portal: Allows the creation of resource bundles and service catalogs, enabling end-users to provision services.
- Compliance management: Scans virtual machines (VMs), hosts, and containers for security and compliance violations.
- Optimization tools: Collects and analyzes metrics from VMs, containers, and hosts to evaluate utilization patterns.
- SmartState analysis: Offers insights into virtual machines, containers, and hosts by analyzing their contents without the need for agents.
6. IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog #
IBM Watson Knowledge Catalog (now part of watsonx.data intelligence) is a data governance and cataloging platform to automate data discovery, improve data quality, and ensure data protection across the enterprise. It enables organizations to find, understand, manage, and curate data assets, providing a centralized, governed catalog that supports AI.
Key features include:
- Data discovery and governance: Automates the discovery of data assets and enables centralized management through a governed catalog.
- Data protection rules: Provides data classification and masking functions, alongside data lineage tracking and audit trails.
- Metadata enrichment: Uses IBM Research® models to improve metadata automatically, adding context, labels, and descriptions across assets.
- Knowledge accelerators: Ready-to-use vocabularies and templates simplify the deployment of data governance and analytics frameworks.
- AI search: Uses AI to improve user queries, offering semantic search capabilities that surface relevant information and provide answers based on context and meaning.
7. Egnyte #
Egnyte is a data governance and security platform to help organizations mitigate risks associated with cyberthreats, manage compliance requirements, and protect sensitive content. By providing tools for secure file sharing, data protection, and regulatory compliance, it helps organizations manage their content while addressing cybersecurity and data privacy challenges.
Key features include:
- Ransomware protection: Detects known ransomware artifacts and variants, enabling organizations to take action to protect files.
- Sensitive content protection: Identifies and reviews sensitive content, such as Personally Identifiable Information (PII), Payment Card Industry (PCI-DSS) data, and Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI).
- Regulatory compliance management: Helps organizations comply with cybersecurity and data privacy regulations like GDPR, CPRA, CMMC, and ISO 27001.
- Security issue remediation: Mitigates risks associated with common vulnerabilities, such as publicly exposed document links and unauthorized login attempts.
- Data confidentiality: Enables secure collaboration through virtual data rooms (VDRs) for sensitive projects like M&A, asset sales, and fundraising. Watermarks previewed files to reduce the risk of data breaches.
8. Talend #
Talend is a data integration and governance platform that enables organizations to manage, clean, and control their data. Designed to combat data chaos, Talend helps users to discover, federate, share, and automate data quality tasks.
Key features include:
- Data integrity and governance: Ensures data is clean and compliant with automated data quality checks and governance features.
- Data discovery and sharing: Provides browser-based tools for discovering and sharing data.
- Data lineage and cataloging: Offers tools for tracking data changes and understanding data flow across systems.
- Self-service applications: Offers self-service tools that enable users to classify, document, and manage data independently.
- Collaborative management: Simplifies data sharing and management with collaborative features, making it easier for teams to find, consume, and work with data.
Conclusion #
Effective cloud governance is essential for maintaining control, security, and efficiency in increasingly complex cloud environments. By implementing governance frameworks and leveraging automation, organizations can ensure consistent policy enforcement, optimize costs, and reduce risks across multi-cloud and hybrid infrastructures.