Cloud Security Alliance Announces 2017 Ron Knode Service Award Recipients

Volunteers recognized for dedication, efforts to furthering cloud security best practices

SEATTLE, WA – November 30, 2017 –The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, today announced the recipients of its sixth annual Ron Knode Service Award, recognizing six members from the Americas, Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions for their excellence in volunteerism. The honorees were selected by the CSA executive team and chosen based on their valuable contributions towards fulfilling CSA’s mission of promoting best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment.

“This group of Service Award recipients exemplifies Ron’s ongoing efforts to further cloud computing and the security challenges that surround it. We deeply appreciate their continued commitment to advancing cloud security best practices,” said Jim Reavis, CEO, Cloud Security Alliance. “With his effusive personality and volunteer spirit, Ron set the bar for volunteerism. We are eternally grateful for his passion and thought leadership which continues to guide our efforts to this day.”

Ron Knode was an information security expert and member of the CSA family who passed away in May 2012. He is remembered as an innovative thinker with endless energy and humor to guide his volunteer contributions. He also was the creator of the CSA CloudTrust Protocol, which today remains an important asset for the continuous monitoring and auditing for cloud assurance and transparency certification. Established in 2012, the Ron Knode Service Award is awarded annually to CSA members whose contributions reflect Ron’s passion for volunteerism and embody the spirit for which this award was established.

This year’s recipients are:

Jon-Michael C. Brook, CSA Americas: Jon-Michael C. Brook, Principal at Guide Holdings, LLC, has 20 years of experience in information security with such organizations as Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Booz Allen Hamilton, Optiv Security and Symantec. Brook’s work traverses the government, financial, healthcare, gaming, oil and gas, and pharmaceutical industries. He holds a number of industry certifications, including CISSP and CCSK. He also has patents and trade secrets in intrusion detection, enterprise network controls, cross domain security and semantic data redaction. He has spoken at numerous events, including the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE), CSA Congress, IAPP Privacy Conferences and DoD Cyber Crime Conference. Additionally, Brook has contributed to a number of CSA projects over the past six years, and currently co-chairs the CSA Top Threats and Cloud Broker Working Groups. He holds a BS-CEN from the University of Florida and an MBA from the University of South Florida.

Xiaoyu Ge, CSA APAC: Xiaoyu Ge is the Senior Security Standards Manager of Huawei’s IT product line, which includes cloud computing, big data, storage, and server products and services. He is also active as a security expert in the Standards Development Organization (SDO). He is the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC27 Working Group expert of China Nation Body and is the author of several SC27 projects such as Requirements for Establishing Roots of Trust for Virtualized Environment. Ge has been an active participant in CSA and was the main contributor of CSA’s Best Practices for Mitigating Risks in Virtualized Environments. He is also a CSA (ISC)² member. Currently, his research interests are focused on cloud security.

Anil Karmel, CSA Americas: Anil Karmel is the co-founder and CEO of C2 Labs and is the former National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Deputy Chief Technology Officer. He serves as the co-chair of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cloud Security Working Group, leading the group to document best practices for application container and microservices security. He is the author of NIST Definition of Application Containers and Microservices, SP 800-180 and co-chairs CSA's Application Container and Microservices Working Group, which documents best practices for application containers and microservices.

Sabri Khemissa, CSA EMEA: Sabri Khemissa leads consultancy services related to emerging technologies at a leading and global security technology company. With more than 18 years of experience in information security services, he has developed extensive experience in developing cybersecurity frameworks and designing IT security solutions for complex and hybrid IT architectures. He is an active member of the CSA IoT Working Group, where he has participated in numerous publications. He is also a contributor to the Identity as a Service (IDaaS) and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) sub-groups of the Security-as-a-Service (SECaaS) Working Group. Since April 2017, he has served as co-chair of the Distributed Ledger Technology/Blockchain working group.

Ashish Mehta, CSA EMEA: Ashish Mehta is an independent IT and security consultant, specializing in solving technology issues related to startups and SMEs in the United States, Dubai, and India. He is a White Hat, specializing in researching web vulnerabilities and has contributed heavily to various open-source projects in the fields of Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC), as well as to the Open Web Application Security Project. For the past year, Mehta has served as co-chair of the CSA Blockchain Working Group. He is currently working on two blockchain projects, which are focused on cryptocurrency exchanges. He has also contributed heavily to the three upcoming research papers and is responsible for coordinating multiple guest presentations for the group. Additionally, Mehta serves as Internet of Things (IoT) security consortium team lead for the CSA's IoT Working Group.

Ronald Tse, CSA APAC: Ronald Tse is the founder and CEO of Ribose, leading strategic development and its technology roadmap. Prior to Ribose, Tse worked on highly-scalable distributed systems at Brown and MIT with a background in the life sciences industry.

Under his leadership, Ribose became the only cloud service provider to be triple assured by the Cloud Security Alliance: CSA STAR Attestation, CSA STAR Certification (Cloud Controls Matrix, CCM 3.0.1) and CSA C-STAR Assessment. He is the founding chair of CSA's SaaS Governance workgroup and is a voting member at CSA's International Standardization Council and represents CSA-China/Hong Kong at ISO/IEC JTC1/SC27 (information security).