Cloud Security Alliance Launches New Asia-Pacific Education Council

Group Holds Kick-Off Meeting to Finalize Charter and Outline Upcoming Initiatives

SINGAPORE – May 25, 2015 – 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 launch of the new CSA Asia- Pacific (APAC) Education Council , an organization within the CSA designed to serve as a catalyst in bridging the gap between education, research and industry in cloud security with the responsibility of providing guidance to the CSA to further efforts in cloud security education and research.

“We are most excited with the creation of the Education Council as it holds so many wonderful possibilities to create the foundation for a new generation of cloud security advocates and professionals,” said Aloysius Cheang, Managing Director, CSA APAC. “We look forward to bringing together cloud industry professionals and the higher learning community to develop publications, research, education and technology initiatives that will lead towards achieving a common vision and global alignment that will add long-term value to the industry.”

The CSA APAC Education Council consists of members from Institutes of Higher Learning (IHLs) and Research Institutes (RIs) from the Asia Pacific region. The founding members from IHLs are as follows:

• Mahidol University, Thailand
• Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore
• National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
• Singapore Institute of Technology, Singapore
• University of South Australia, Australia
• University of Waikato, New Zealand

The founding members from RIs are Hong Kong Applied Science and Technology Research Institute (ASTRI) and Institute of Higher Energy Physics Chinese Academy of Sciences (IHEP CAS).

The CSA APAC Education Council also aims to leverage the strength of CSA to build a cohesive effort across the Asia Pacific region to coordinate resources into research and development.

Co-chair of the Education Council, Dr. Raymond Choo from the University of South Australia, said, “Threats to our cloud ecosystem are increasingly important and strategically relevant in both developed and developing countries. Ensuring the security of the cloud ecosystem is one of the highest-priority items on the global policy and national security agendas, and an increasingly challenging policy area for governments. By bringing together expertise, perspectives and approaches from different disciplines and countries, the CSA Asia Pacific Education Council will provide a platform to investigate what we can do singularly and collaboratively to secure our cloud ecosystems and future.”

Professor Geoffrey Holmes, Dean of FCMS of the University of Waikato, said, “The Education Council addresses the perceived gap between academia and industry, and provides universities from the Asia Pacific region a great platform for research collaboration and global commercialization. The formation of this council is all the more important for an area such as cloud security - where concerns need to be addressed from a global perspective, and where the potential for commercialization is considerable. Waikato University is a research-led institution and, as such, hopes to provide the Council with a research-driven perspective on these concerns.”

Dr. Ryan Ko, Research Advisor for CSA APAC, said, “Once again, the CSA Asia Pacific region is showing its leadership. The formation of the CSA Education Council will not only catalyze Asia Pacific research outputs into CSA research working groups, but also provide a platform for cloud security innovation from leading universities and institutions of higher learning (IHLs) to be translated into cutting edge products and companies.”

Mr. Wee Meng Thoo, Head of Innovation Initiative CSA APAC, said, “Innovation has nothing to do with how much R&D funds we have. CSA is taking a simple and pragmatic step that is to fuel a collaboration effort among the IHLs to sit down, interact, argue and debate among the council members in solving real world issues towards making Cloud as a secure and better place for business. In fact, Cloud actually creates opportunities for more innovation and especially in the area of enhanced security, we (CSA) are taking the Innovation initiative as the calling card of the future.”

About the Cloud Security Alliance

The Cloud Security Alliance 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. For further information, visit us at https://www.cloudsecurityalliance.org, and follow us on Twitter @cloudsa.

Contact

Kari Walker
ZAG Communications for the CSA
[email protected]
703.928.9996