Cloud Security Alliance’s Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) Wins Cybersecurity Excellence Award

CCSK, the benchmark for cloud security expertise, earns Best Cloud Security Certification

SEATTLE – March 19, 2025 – The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining standards, certifications, and best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment, is pleased to announce that its Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) has been named Best Cloud Security Certification by the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards. The CCSK is the first credential dedicated to cloud security and stands at the forefront of cloud security education, balancing foundational knowledge with in-depth exploration of specialized topics and emphasizing the practical application of security principles in real-world scenarios.

“We are extremely pleased that the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards have recognized CCSK as the Best Cloud Security Certification. This recognition reinforces CSA’s dedication to empowering professionals with the knowledge and skills needed to navigate today’s evolving threat landscape. We couldn’t be more pleased to be acknowledged for our efforts in setting the standard for cloud security certification," said Jim Reavis, CEO and co-founder, Cloud Security Alliance.

Called the "mother of all cloud computing certifications," the vendor-neutral CCSK tests for a broad range of cloud security knowledge and serves as the foundation for those seeking to demonstrate a deep-seated knowledge and competency with cyber, information, software, and cloud computing infrastructure security. The CCSK certificate is highly regarded as the benchmark for cloud security expertise and provides a comprehensive, unbiased understanding of how to effectively secure data in the cloud. 

Built from the ground up, the recently updated CCSK v5 incorporates the newest advancements in organizational management, cloud-native security, workload, network security, security monitoring, data security, and the latest strategic drivers such as AI and Zero Trust. With an increased and refined focus area, CCSK v5 offers increased coverage on cloud workloads and emphasizes serverless/Function-as-a-Service (FaaS) and expanded material on application security, CI/CD, DevSecOps and automation. It also features extended content across governance, auditing, compliance, organizational security, IAM, and incident response.

Influenced by a decade’s worth of experience regarding the skills needed to be successful in today's far more complex environments, CCSK’s comprehensive curriculum equips professionals with actionable skills, enabling them to effectively address modern challenges in complex cloud environments and set new industry standards. 

“We congratulate Cloud Security Alliance on this outstanding achievement in the ‘Best Cloud Security Certification’ category of the 2025 Cybersecurity Excellence Awards,” said Holger Schulze, founder of Cybersecurity Insiders and organizer of the Cybersecurity Excellence Awards. “As we celebrate 10 years of recognizing excellence in cybersecurity, your innovation, commitment, and leadership set a powerful example for the entire industry.”

Learn more about CSA’s Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge.

About Cloud Security Alliance

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is the world’s leading organization dedicated to defining and raising awareness of best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. CSA harnesses the subject matter expertise of industry practitioners, associations, governments, and its corporate and individual members to offer cloud security-specific research, education, training, certification, events, and products. CSA's activities, knowledge, and extensive network benefit the entire community impacted by cloud — from providers and customers to governments, entrepreneurs, and the assurance industry — and provide a forum through which different parties can work together to create and maintain a trusted cloud ecosystem. For further information, visit us at www.cloudsecurityalliance.org, and follow us on Twitter @cloudsa.

Media Contacts
Kristina Rundquist
ZAG Communications for the CSA
kristina@zagcommunications.com