The CSA is part of the STRATUS project, a six-year cybersecurity project

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) said this week that it is lending a prototype data auditing and compliance regulation tool to the STRATUS initiative, a six-year multi-million dollar cybersecurity project funded by New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment.

STRATUS, which stands for Security Technologies Returning Accountability, Transparency and User-centric Services in the Cloud, is a project being led by the University of Waikato intends to develop a series of security tools, techniques and capabilities to help give cloud users more control over how they secure the cloud services they use.

As part of the project the CSA showed how cloud data governance could be automated by applying auditing guidelines (CSA Cloud Control Matrix, ISO standards, etc.) and compliance regulations using a recently developed online tool.

The organisation, which is leading the data governance and accountability subproject within STRATUS, said it would also help support STRATUS’ commercialisation efforts.

“STRATUS’ approach to research commercialisation is different from typical scientific research grants,” said Dr. Ryan Ko, principal investigator of STRATUS, and CSA APAC research advisor.

“STRATUS understands that for cloud security innovation to reach a global audience, it will require a platform which will allow these cutting-edge cloud services to quickly align to global best practices and requirements – a core CSA strength given its strong research outputs such as the Cloud Controls Matrix and the Cloud Data Governance Working Group,” Ko said.

Aloysius Cheang, managing director for CSA APAC: “We have developed a prototype tool based on our work so far, that has received positive reviews. In addition, we are working to connect STRATUS and New Zealand to the CSA eco-system through our local chapter. More importantly, we are beginning to see some preliminary results of the efforts to connect to dots to commercialisation efforts as well as standardization efforts.”

The organisation reckons it should be able to show off the “fruit of these efforts” in November this year.