AI-Driven Governance and Zero Trust Automation for Continuous Cloud Compliance and Secure Access

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@article{1712964,
      author = {Nathaniel Adeniyi Akande, Olatunde Ayomide Olasehan, Jeremiah Folorunso Oluwagbotemi, Cynthia Udoka Duruemeruo, Sopuluchukwu Ani},
      title = {AI-Driven Governance and Zero Trust Automation for Continuous Cloud Compliance and Secure Access},
      journal = {Iconic Research And Engineering Journals},
      year = {2023},
      volume = {6},
      number = {9},
      pages = {545-559},
      issn = {2456-8880},
      url = {https://www.irejournals.com/formatedpaper/1712964.pdf},
      abstract = {The expansion of cloud-native infrastructures, hybrid architectures, and distributed digital ecosystems has intensified the need for continuous security verification, rapid threat detection, and policy-driven governance. Conventional perimeter-based trust models have proven inadequate for protecting agile, API-driven, multi-cloud environments where identities, workloads, and data flows shift dynamically. Zero Trust Architecture (ZTA), as formalized by NIST (2020), has emerged as a strategic response to these challenges, emphasizing continuous authentication, least-privilege access, and context-aware policy enforcement. At the same time, advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled more adaptive, predictive, and automated governance mechanisms that support cloud compliance and security decision-making at scale. In this paper, an integrated AI-Driven Governance and Zero Trust Automation (AIG-ZTA framework is designed to deliver continuous cloud compliance and secure access across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The framework combines Zero Trust principles with machine learning?based behavioural analytics, automated policy orchestration, and dynamic risk scoring. Through architectural modeling, empirical evaluation, and multi-cloud simulation, the study demonstrates how AI-driven governance enhances identity assurance, reduces policy drift, and accelerates compliance verification. Results show that organizations adopting AIG-ZTA can achieve more resilient cloud security postures, improved real-time access decisions, and scalable, auditable compliance management. The paper concludes by highlighting future research directions, including autonomous ZTA systems, AI-driven compliance reasoning, and the fusion of generative models with continuous authorization pipelines.},
      keywords = {AI-Driven Governance, Automated Policy Orchestration, Multi-Cloud Security Architecture, Zero Trust Architecture},
      month = {March},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.64388/IREV6I9-1712964}
  }