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Introduction

THE CERTIFIED CLOUD SECURITY Professional (CCSP) denotes a professional with demonstrated ability across important aspects of architecture, data security, and risk management in cloud computing. The exam covers knowledge and skills across six domains of practice related to cloud security, codified in the (ISC)² CCSP Common Body of Knowledge (CBK):

 Domain 1: Cloud Concepts, Architecture, and Design

 Domain 2: Cloud Data Security

 Domain 3: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Security

 Domain 4: Cloud Application Security

 Domain 5: Cloud Security Operations

 Domain 6: Legal, Risk, and Compliance

Passing the exam is one condition of certification, and to qualify for the certification, a professional must have five years of experience in information technology, of which three years must be in a security-specific capacity and at least one year dedicated to one or more of the six CCSP domains.

Professionals take many paths into information security, and there are variations in acceptable practices across different industries and regions. The CCSP CBK represents a baseline standard of security knowledge relevant to cloud security and management, though the rapid pace of change in cloud computing means a professional must continuously maintain their knowledge to stay current. As you read this guide, consider not only the scenarios or circumstances presented to highlight the CBK topics, but also connect it to common practices and norms in your organization, region, and culture. Once you achieve CCSP certification, you will be asked to maintain your knowledge with continuing education, so keep topics of interest in mind for further study once you have passed the exam.

Domain 1: Cloud Concepts, Architecture, and Design

Understanding cloud computing begins with the building blocks of cloud services, and the Cloud Concepts, Architecture, and Design domain introduces these foundational concepts. This includes two vital participants: cloud service providers and cloud consumers, as well as reference architectures used to deliver cloud services like infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and software as a service (SaaS). These relatively new methods of accessing IT resources offer interesting business benefits like shifting spending from capital expenditure (CapEx) to operating expenditure (OpEx). This changes the way organizations budget and pay for the IT resources needed to run their business, so it is not uncommon to see financial leaders driving adoption of cloud services. New IT service models bring with them new forms of information security risks, however, which must be assessed and weighed so the organization achieves an optimal balance of cost (in the form of risk) with benefits (in the form of reduced IT spending). This will drive decisions on which cloud deployment model to adopt, like public or private cloud, as well as key internal governance initiatives when migrating to and managing cloud computing.

Domain 2: Cloud Data Security

Information security is fundamentally concerned with preserving the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. Although cloud computing upends many legacy IT models and practices, security risks to information systems remain. The Cloud Data Security domain does introduce new concepts like the cloud data lifecycle, as well as cloud-specific considerations like data dispersion and loss of physical control over storage media that requires unique approaches to data disposal. Cloud security practitioners must understand how to implement controls for audit and accountability of data stored or processed in the cloud, as well as crucial oversight tasks like data discovery to create an inventory. This domain introduces proactive safeguards intended to manage sensitive data stored in the cloud, like masking, tokenization, data loss prevention (DLP), and classification of data. Cloud-specific considerations and adaptations of traditional controls are a primary concern, since cloud services remove traditional capabilities like physical destruction of disk drives, while adding new capabilities like instantaneous global data replication.

Domain 3: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Security

There are two perspectives treated in the Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Security domain. Cloud providers require skilled security practitioners to design, deploy, and maintain both physically and logically secure environments. This includes buildings, facilities, and utilities needed to provide the cloud service offering, as well as configuration and management of software systems like hypervisors, storage area networks (SANs), and software-defined networking (SDN) infrastructure. A key concern is the security of data stored by the cloud consumers, particularly properly isolating tenant data to avoid leakage between cloud tenants. From the perspective of the cloud consumer, traditional security controls will require adaptation for cloud environments, such as the use of virtualized hardware security modules (HSM) to generate and manage cryptographic keys, and additional layers of encryption required to reduce the risk associated with giving up physical control of storage media. Audit mechanisms like log collection are traditionally present in cloud environments, but abilities like packet capture and analysis may not be available due to multitenant data concerns. Disaster recovery and business continuity are also presented in this domain; while the inherent high availability nature of many cloud services is beneficial for organizations, proper configuration to take advantage of these features is required.

Domain 4: Cloud Application Security

Security practitioners working in cloud computing environments face the challenge of more rapid deployment, coupled with the relative ease with which more users can develop sophisticated cloud applications. Again, these are advantages to the business at the possible expense of security, so the Cloud Application Security domain presents key requirements for recognizing the benefits offered by cloud applications without introducing unacceptable risks. These begin with a focus on the importance of fostering awareness throughout the organization of common cloud security basics, as well as specific training for cloud app developers on vulnerabilities, pitfalls, and strategies to avoid them. Modifications to the software development lifecycle (SDLC) are presented to help accommodate changes introduced by cloud-specific risks, such as architectures designed to avoid vendor lock-in and threat modeling specific to the broadly accessible nature of cloud platforms. Since many cloud computing services are delivered by third parties, this domain introduces assurance, validation, and testing methods tailored to address the lack of direct control over acquired IT services and applications. It also introduces common application security controls and specifics of their implementation for cloud environments, like web application firewalls (WAF), sandboxing, and Extensible Markup Language (XML) gateways. Many cloud services rely heavily on functionality offered via application programming interfaces (APIs), so it is crucial that security practitioners understand how data is exchanged, processed, and protected by APIs.

Domain 5: Cloud Security Operations

The Cloud Security Operations domain is a companion to many of the concepts introduced in the Cloud Platform and Infrastructure Security domain. It deals with issues of implementing, building, operating, and managing the physical and logical infrastructure needed for a cloud environment. There is a heavy focus on the cloud service provider's perspective, so concepts in this domain may be unfamiliar to some security practitioners who have only worked to secure cloud services as a consumer. The concepts are largely similar to legacy or on-premises security, such as the secure configuration of BIOS and use of Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for hardware security, deployment of virtualization management tools, and configuring remote maintenance capabilities to allow remote administrative tasks. Considerations unique to cloud environments include the additional rigor required in the configuration of isolation features, which prevent data access across tenants, as well as the much larger demands of managing capacity, availability, and monitoring of vast, multicountry data centers. Traditional security operations (SecOps) are also of critical concern for security practitioners in a cloud environment, such as the management of vulnerability and patch management programs, network access and security controls, as well as configuration and change management programs. Additional SecOps activities covered in this domain include supporting incident response and digital forensics when security incidents occur, as well as traditional security operations center (SOC) oversight and monitoring functions for network security, log capture and analysis, and service incident management. These tasks are also covered from the cloud consumer’s perspective, as many cloud services and security tools provide log data that must be analyzed to support policy enforcement and incident detection.

Domain 6: Legal, Risk, and Compliance

Legal and regulatory requirements are a significant driver of the work many information security professionals perform, and cloud computing makes this increasingly more complex due to its inherently global nature. The Legal, Risk, and Compliance domain details the conflicting international laws and regulations that organizations will encounter when using cloud services. These present financial risks, additional compliance obligations and risk, as well as technical challenges like verifying that cloud applications and services are configured in accordance with compliance requirements. One particularly important area of focus is privacy legislation; with many countries and localities introducing strict requirements to safeguard privacy data, organizations using the cloud must weigh any financial benefits of a cloud migration against potential fines if they violate these laws. New challenges are also emerging around jurisdiction over multinational cloud services: how do you determine jurisdiction for a U.S. based company operating a cloud data center in Singapore processing data belonging to a Swiss citizen? Three different laws potentially overlap in this scenario. Processes for audits, assurance, and reporting are also covered, as security practitioners must understand and be able to implement both internal oversight mechanisms like gap analysis and audit planning, while also selecting and supporting external auditors for standards like Service Organization Control (SOC) audit reports. Some organizations may even find themselves in such heavily regulated industries, like healthcare or national defense, that the potential risks of cloud computing outweigh any cost savings. These types of decisions must be driven by solid risk management principles, which require adequate assessment and mitigation techniques. Since cloud service providers are third parties not directly under the control of the organization, vendor risk management practices like contract design and service level agreements (SLAs) must be utilized to execute the chosen risk management strategy.

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