The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing, and to provide education on the uses of Cloud Computing to help secure all other forms of computing. The Cloud Security Alliance is led by a broad coalition of industry practitioners, corporations, associations and other key stakeholders.

History

The issues and opportunities of cloud computing gained considerable notice in 2008 within the information security community. At the ISSA CISO Forum in Las Vegas, in November of 2008, the concept of the Cloud Security Alliance was born. Following a presentation of emerging trends by Jim Reavis that included a call for action for securing cloud computing, Reavis and Nils Puhlmann outlined the initial mission and strategy of the CSA. A series of organizational meetings with industry leaders in early December 2008 formalized the founding of the CSA. Our outreach to the information security community to create our initial work product for the 2009 RSA Conference resulted in dozens of volunteers to research, author, edit and review our first whitepaper.