The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organisation dedicated to defining standards, certifications and best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, has announced that in response to rapid membership growth throughout the region, it will be opening a new CSA Europe headquarters and with it, creating a new General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) Center of Excellence for cloud computing in Berlin, Germany.
“We have seen strong growth in our enterprise members throughout Europe, most notably in the financial services sector. We also are collaborating closely with several national governments on critical, national cloud-security standards. In addition, CSA’s research in developing a GDPR Code of Conduct and related best practices has put us in the forefront of the industry in assisting both customers and cloud providers in addressing this critical regulation. In order to meet CSA’s continued growth in this region, we are expanding our presence in Europe and will use this base for coordination of all of our events, chapters and enterprise outreach throughout the continent,” said Jim Reavis, CEO, Cloud Security Alliance.
CSA has been active in the European market since its founding in 2009 and has 14 national chapters in Europe. Further, it has participated in or led several research projects funded by the European Commission under the FP7 and H2020 programmes, as well as developed a close collaboration with the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA).
CSA Europe and the GDPR Center of Excellence are being supported by founding companies from within CSA’s corporate membership rotas. These companies provide critical resources and expertise, and will participate in an advisory board dedicated to CSA’s strategy in Europe and the roadmap of CSA’s GDPR capabilities. Initial founders include Google Cloud, Netskope, OneTrust, Qualys, and Zscaler.
“The GDPR is a critical step forward in the battle to effectively legislate our digital, always-on world and Netskope is honoured to partner with the CSA as a founding member of the GDPR Center of Excellence,” said Neil Thacker, CISO, EMEA and Data Protection Officer, Netskope. “As enterprises grapple with the web of legislation governing the post-GDPR digital world, the centre of excellence will serve as an important resource for the industry.”
“OneTrust is proud to support CSA as a founding member of the CSA GDPR Center of Excellence. As the largest and most widely used dedicated privacy management technology platform, our customers find it critical for OneTrust to partner with organisations like CSA who help scale the privacy and security ecosystem through standards,” said Kabir Barday, OneTrust CEO and Fellow of Information Privacy (FIP).
“Our adoption of the CSA CAIQ Vendor assessment questionnaire into our market-leading vendor privacy and security risk management platform has proved to be highly valuable for our customers. Additionally, the CSA GDPR Code of Conduct and CSA Common Controls Matrix built-in to the OneTrust platform provide an easy and standardised foundation to build on. Congratulations to CSA on the opening of the GDPR Center of Excellence and we look forward to continuing to build on our partnership to further simplify privacy and security compliance.”
“As a founding member of CSA, I am excited about the opening of CSA EMEA and the creation of the GDPR Center of Excellence in Berlin,” said Jay Chaudhry, CEO, President and Founder of Zscaler. “The cloud and mobility are creating a megashift that is disrupting the traditional network and security models and organisations around the world have looked to the CSA for guidance as they transform to a cloud-first strategy. With the opening of its European headquarters, CSA EMEA will provide further leadership in the principles and practices of secure cloud transformation.”
The GDPR Center of Excellence will serve as the focal point from which CSA will coordinate its GDPR activities globally. CSA’s landmark GDPR Code of Conduct, which was released to the public in November of 2017, is already adopted as a critical foundation for alignment with the regulation by numerous organisations. The Center of Excellence will drive future development of this guidance, privacy education and the integration of GDPR with CSA’s Security, Trust and Assurance Registry (STAR), the world’s leading trust mark for cloud providers worldwide.
“I look forward to working with our founders, supervisory authorities from Member States, and other GDPR thought leaders to help the industry harmonise security and privacy and better protect the personal information of citizens in the EU and beyond,” said Daniele Catteddu, Cloud Security Alliance CTO and leader of CSA’s GDPR initiatives.
