Cloud Security Alliance Announces Upcoming Launch of CCSK v4

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), an organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, recently announced at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas that its Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) has been significantly updated to reflect changes in the cloud and security landscape and will be available in November of this year.

The CCSK v4 features new content and will align training with the newly released CSA Security Guidance for Critical Areas of Focus in Cloud Computing 4.0. The labs for the CCSK Plus course, which was developed to provide students with a solid foundation in cloud security, have also been significantly updated to better reflect real-world security practices. A detailed list of changes can be found here.

"The CCSK since its launch has been recognized by a broad coalition of experts and organizations and widely accepted as the gold standard for demonstrating cloud security competency," said Jim Reavis, CEO, CSA. "With this update, the CCSK is again proving to be the definitive resource for anyone in IT and information security who is looking to declare their understanding of key cloud security issues."

Now, the content represents more clarity, accuracy and better alignment with the recently published Cloud Security Guidance document, to better reflect current operational realities in cloud, the organization said. Some key updates to note in the new version are reflected in the rebuilding of the introductory, infrastructure, and governance/legal/risk sections. Additionally, the materials covering data security includes an expanded coverage of CASB technologies and business continuity/disaster recovery. Also the application security and identity sections now include IoT, mobile, serverless computing, and Big Data technologies.

Launched in 2010, the CCSK was the industry's first benchmark for measuring cloud security skillsets. The body of knowledge is constituted by the CCSK Cloud Security Guidance v4, the CSA Cloud Control Matrix and the ENISA Cloud Computing Risk Assessment report.  Approximately 80 percent of the exam questions will be related to the content of the CSA Security Guidance v4. The CCSK v4 exam will be available for $395.