Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK)

I recently passed the CSA Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge and I found so much of the content directly valuable. I would recommend it to all IT security professionals. It provides a set of comprehensive and vendor neutral cloud computing principles that are invaluable across security roles and responsibilities. The CSA Security Guidance v4 document will be required reading for all my engineering talent in our organization going forward.

With CCSK certification, professionals who have Cloud Computing responsibilities can demonstrate thorough Cloud security knowledge based on the CSA’s catalogue of security best practices.

As enterprises move toward cloud computing, they are desperately seeking guidance and education in this new domain. CSA is bridging this gap and the CCSK provides an important first step in establishing baseline knowledge for individuals tasked with building and managing applications to the cloud.

The CSA, in providing a set of goals through the CCSK, is challenging security practitioners to become the cloud thought-leaders we need today and tomorrow to ensure safe and secure cloud environments. In developing the CCSK, CSA is 'setting the bar' for security professionals and providing business executives a means to gauge the opinions and rhetoric associated with security in the cloud.

The CCSK reflects both the operational knowledge of the CCM (Cloud Controls Matrix) as well as the strategic goals for the CSA. The CCM itself is a superset of many existing security control standards, which makes the CCSK all the more relevant to today's security environment.

This is the mother of all cloud computing security certifications. The Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge certification is vendor-neutral, and certifies competency in key cloud security areas.

The CCSK study materials were very upfront and clear in presenting what was needed to pass the exam. The Security Guidance V.4 was all encompassing and included a lot of materials, some of which wasn’t tested on but I appreciate learning about regardless. Overall, I think the study material provided along with the guidance for how CSA breaks down the CCSK testing domains and objectives, are enough to pass the exam and gain a fundamental understanding of what is being tested.