Singapore, 31 March 2020 – Asia’s biggest Telecom, Media and Technology (TMT) event ConnecTechAsia has inked a knowledge partnership deal with the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), the world’s leading organisation dedicated to defining standards, certifications and best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. Under the partnership, CSA will play a key role in boosting event thought leadership by providing relevant and up-to-date insights on cloud computing.
According to IDC, cloud IT infrastructure revenues surpassed that of traditional IT infrastructure reaching US$16.8 billion in 2018 . With the maturity of cloud services and the significant amount of resources cloud service providers (CSPs) have invested into securing their offerings, CSA has witnessed an ‘upwards shift’ in the prominence of key cloud security issues.
CSA’s latest report on Top Threats for Cloud Computing surveying numerous industry experts found that traditional cloud security issues that fall under the responsibility of CSPs have dropped in terms of their importance. Concerns such as denial of service, shared technology vulnerabilities, CSP data loss and system vulnerabilities, which also featured in previous reports, were rated so that they were excluded from the updated list.
Instead, there is a greater need to address security issues situated higher up the technology stack and that are the result of senior management decisions. At the top of that list are (1) data breaches, (2) misconfiguration & inadequate change control, and (3) lack of cloud security architecture and strategy. With the focus on cloud security shifting upwards, cloud users need to be clear about the shared responsibility model of the cloud and brush up security postures of what they have implemented in the user space of the technology stack.
Getting this accomplished is of utmost urgency but will take some time and a concerted effort by enterprises. As such, CSA expects to see a number of breaches and hacks in the cloud in 2020 attributed to users’ misconfigurations and complacency.
The future will be a combination of old threats made new and exploiting fast moving new technology. As an industry leader, CSA makes available at no cost a wide variety of guidance documents and best practices on cloud security that are community-developed and peer-reviewed by security professionals around the world. Cloud users and enterprises can supplement their efforts by increasing their competencies in cloud security and tapping into the repository of free resources.
Commenting on the partnership, Dr Lee Hing Yan, Executive Vice President, APAC at Cloud Security Alliance says, “ConnecTechAsia is one of Asia’s largest tech events, and we’re excited to be part of it for the second year running. Leveraging ConnecTechAsia’s unprecedented market reach, this partnership will enable us to connect with the global tech community and elevate our insights and offerings to prospective buyers and sellers around the world.”
“Knowledge is power in today’s fast-moving digital economy. To stay ahead of the curve, enterprises need to keep their finger on the pulse on the latest industry and market developments to optimise business decisions. With the combination of CSA’s expertise in cloud computing and security melded with our reach to the global community, we look forward to supporting the TMT industry and foster continuous growth in the region,” says Ivan Ferrari, Event Director for ConnecTechAsia.
CSA will share more at their annual CSA APAC Summit to be co-located with ConnecTechAsia at Singapore Expo on 1 October 2020.
