Cloud Security Alliance Announces Annual Ron Knode Service Award Recipients

Contributions from Six Dedicated Individual CSA Volunteers Recognized in Honor of the Late CSA Member and Volunteer Contributor Ron Knode

San Jose, CA – CSA CONGRESS 2014 - September 19, 2014 –The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) today announced the recipients of its third annual Ron Knode Service Award, recognizing six members from the Americas, Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions for excellence in volunteerism. The honorees were selected by the CSA executive team and chosen based on their valuable contributions towards fulfilling the CSA’s mission of promoting best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing. This year’s recipients will be honored this week at the CSA Congress 2014 & IAPP Privacy Academy 2014. 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 to CSA members on an annual basis whose contributions reflect Ron’s passion for volunteerism and embody the spirit for which this award was established. This year’s recipients include: Americas Region Eric A. Hibbard, CISSP, CISA; CSA Americas: Eric Hibbard is the CTO of Security and Privacy for Hitachi Data Systems. He also serves in ISO editorship roles for the ISO/IEC 27040 (Storage security), ISO/IEC 17788 (Cloud Computing), and ISO/IEC 27050 (eDiscovery) projects. For CSA, Hibbard has been a co-chair of the International Standardization Council, helping CSA engage in standards development, and also a contributor to the Subject Matter Expert Advisory Council. Junaid Islam, CSA Americas: Junaid Islam is the founder, President and CTO of Vidder and has more than 20 years of product development experience in the security and networking industry. He is currently the co-Chair of the Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) Working Group, is actively involved in development of the SDP specification launched in 2013, and is also creator the CSA Hackathon events. APAC Region Ben T. Katsumi, CSA APAC: Ben Katsumi is CEO & Chief Consultant at Information Economy Research Institute, Inc. and Executive Director of the Cloud Security Alliance Japan Chapter. He is a co-founder of the CSA Japan Chapter, leading its legal incorporation in 2013. He currently drives the CSA Japan Chapter as Executive Director and Secretary General. Steven Yi-Lang Tsai, APAC – Steven Yi-Lang Tsai is a researcher with the National Center for High-performance Computing. He is the Cloud Security Alliance Taiwan Chapter Founder and Director. His works include the research projects for the detection. He is the Director of major security projects and leader of an Information Security Incident Response Team to work for Taiwan Academic Network (TANet) to handing security incident. EMEA Region Alberto Manfredi, CSA EMEA: Alberto Manfredi is co-Founder and President of the CSA Italy chapter and supports CSA EMEA in chapter expansion and development. He currently serves as Business Development Manager Smart Solutions with Selex ES, a Defense and Security Electronics Division of Finmeccanica Spa. He has been working in the ICT market since 1993 with a focus on information security in the last 11 years. He is a member of ISC2,ISACA-AIEA, SANS, AFCEA Rome, DFA, ANORC (honorary member) associations. Damir Savanović, CSA EMEA: Damir Savanovic is Chief Information Security Officer in SKB at Société Générale Group. He serves as President of the CSA Slovenia chapter and is an active member of the Cloud Controls Matrix, Consensus Assessments Initiative Questionnaire, Mobile, Privacy Level Agreement and Service Level Agreement working groups. He has also organized the CSA Central Eastern Europe Summit for the past two years. “We will always be grateful for Ron’s hard work and dedication, and he will always be remembered. We continue to benefit from his commitment and passion even today,” said Jim Reavis, CEO of the CSA. “These six individuals once again truly embody the spirit of Ron’s commitment to volunteerism. In his honor, we congratulate them and thank them for their tireless volunteer hours and dedication to promoting secure cloud computing across the globe.” 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 www.cloudsecurityalliance.org, and follow us on Twitter @cloudsa. Media Contact: Kari Walker for the CSA 703.928.9996 [email protected]