Which policy is essential for monitoring the security of cloud services?

The incident response policy is critical for monitoring the security of cloud services because it outlines the procedures to follow when a security breach or incident occurs. This policy establishes guidelines for detecting, responding to, and recovering from security incidents, ensuring that the organization can quickly address potential threats to its cloud infrastructure.

In the context of cloud security, having a robust incident response policy allows an organization to effectively monitor its systems, identify irregularities, and respond in real-time to potential security threats. This proactive approach minimizes the impact of security incidents and enhances the overall security posture of the cloud environment.

While other policies, such as access control and data retention, play important roles in security management, they do not specifically focus on the mechanisms and strategies for responding to security incidents. An access control policy governs user permissions, and a data retention policy defines how long data should be stored, but neither addresses the monitoring and reaction to security events like the incident response policy does.