On 17 and 18 November Berlin hosted the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Congress EMEA 2015. Boasting a roll call of over 20 European and American speakers, (including CNIL, NIST, BSI, the European Commission plus the participation of Bruce Schenier), the congress looked at the latest challenges posed by a secure use of Cloud services, the practical problems and limitations associated with Cloud Computing (cloud incidents, security commitments of the providers) and the opportunities deriving from the new Cloud-Computing solutions, standards and paradigms, whether technological, legal or regulatory.

GMV was the only speaker presenting a paper at the congress. Mariano J. Benito, CISO of GMV Secure e-Solutions, presented the results of the Third Study of the State-of-Art of Cloud Security, which has been drawn up by the Peruvian and Spanish chapter of CSA and ISMS Forum. This study brings out the maturity of Cloud services, even though the quality of Cloud providers’ services does not yet meet its clients’ sky-high security demands.

As study coordinator, Mariano J. Benito also spoke about some of its other aspects, such as the first detected cases of Cloud client dropout, Shadow IT, incident management enhancements, impact of legal aspects on Cloud users or specific Cloud certifications. Mariano J. Benito pointed out that this was the third study of its kind, building on those drawn up in 2013 and 2014, and therefore giving a historical view of its development over time.

During the gala dinner Mariano J. Benito was presented with the “Ron Knode Service Award”, recognizing the CISO of GMV Secure e-Solutions as a key player in the Spanish Cloud panorama, due to his contributions to the adoption of secure, standard-based Cloud Computing services, whether as GMV or as a member of CSA.

Image of the prizewinners in Cloud Security Alliance of Europe:

From left to right: Mariano J. Benito (CISO of GMV Secure e-Solutions), Jim Reavis (President of CSA), Kai Roer (President of the Norwegian CSA Chapter), Daniele Catteddu (President of CSA-EMEA), Said Tabet (EMC2) and JR Santos (R&D Director of CSA)