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Data Governance

Cost Management introduces financial data and business context on top of technical usage. Data governance ensures that this information is handled in line with your organization’s security, privacy, and compliance requirements.

Use this guide to classify Cost Management data, define access controls, manage retention, and document changes that affect financial reporting.

Data Classification and Scope​

Start by classifying Cost Management data:

  • Treat detailed cost, discount, and margin information as sensitive financial data.
  • Recognize that allocation metadata (BUs, cost centers, customers, projects) can reveal commercially sensitive relationships.
  • Consider whether any cost views include regulated data (for example, customer identifiers that fall under privacy rules).

Use your existing data classification scheme (for example, Public/Internal/Confidential/Restricted) and apply it to Cloudaware Cost Management objects and reports and dashboards built on them.

Access Controls​

Combine classification with RBAC:

  • Limit broad access to detailed billing objects; prefer summarized dashboards and statements for wide audiences.
  • Use field‑level security to protect sensitive attributes such as discounts, list vs. effective rates, and reseller margins.
  • Apply row‑level filters or sharing rules to restrict customer‑specific or BU‑specific data to authorized users only.

Typical Control Stack in Cloudaware​

  • Object-level permissions: Define whether a role can read billing, allocation, budget, chargeback, or optimization objects at all.
  • Record-level access: Define whether a role can see only records for its BU, customer, project, application, or other assigned scope.
  • Field-level security: Define whether a role can see sensitive fields such as discounts, margins, list rates, or effective rates.
  • Report and dashboard access: Define whether a role can run, view, subscribe to, or export reports and dashboards built on Cost Management data.
  • API access: Define whether integrations or users can query the same data outside the UI.

Retention and Archiving​

Decide how long to retain:

  • Billing line items and cost datasets.
  • Aggregated cost tables used for reporting and KPIs.
  • Showback/chargeback statements and related records.

Consider:

  • Regulatory requirements for financial record retention.
  • How far back you need data for trend analysis and forecasting.
  • Storage and performance implications of long storage periods.

Where necessary, offload older detailed data to archives or data warehouses while keeping summarized financial views in Cloudaware for ongoing analysis.

Change Management and Documentation​

Because Cost Management influences financial views:

  • Document allocation rules, shared‑cost models, and showback/chargeback designs.
  • Record when significant changes are made and why (for example, new BU structure, revised shared‑cost policy).
  • Communicate changes to stakeholders ahead of billing cycles so they understand potential impacts on dashboards and statements.

Use internal runbooks or wikis to keep this documentation discoverable for FinOps, finance, and audit teams.