A federated cloud is a cloud model in which multiple providers interoperate through shared standards, identity, and management interfaces while each provider keeps its own governance, policies, and control boundary. Instead of one centralized operator, the environment is stitched together from independent domains that can share workloads, data, or services under agreed trust rules.
In cyber security, federated cloud matters because it can reduce vendor lock-in and improve resilience, but it also expands the trust surface. Defenders must secure identity federation, authorization, logging, key management, and exit procedures across organizations. Attackers often target the weakest boundary between providers, such as misconfigured trust relationships, weak federated identity, or poor interoperability controls. In practice, federated cloud is used in sovereignty-oriented and multi-tenant environments where organizations want local control without losing portability or shared services.