CCSP: Expert Guides and Resources

The Certified Cloud Security Professional (CCSP) credential is based upon a Common Body of Knowledge (CBK) jointly developed by the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC)2 and the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).The CBK (and the associated exam) includes six domains that cover separate, but interrelated, areas: Cloud Concepts, Architecture and Design; Cloud Data Security; Cloud Platform & Infrastructure Security; Cloud Application Security; Cloud Security Operations; and Legal, Risk and Compliance.

When studying for the CCSP exam, you must consider how to implement data security technologies and design data security strategies that fit your business and security needs. The following technologies are commonly applied as part of a comprehensive data security strategy in the cloud: Encryption and key management Hashing Data loss prevention (DLP) Data de-identification (by masking and data obfuscation) Tokenization Encryption and key management As encryption pertains to cloud data security, encryption and key management are critical topics that must be fully understood in order to pass the CCSP exam.

The Secure Software Development Lifecycle process is covered under Domain 4, which represents 17 percent of the CCSP certification exam. Streamlined and secure application development requires a consistent methodology and a well-defined process of getting from concept to finished product. SDLC is the series of steps that is followed to build, modify, and maintain computing software.

Domain 3, which includes cloud platform and infrastructure security, represents 17 percent of the CCSP certification exam. Virtualization is the process of creating software instances of actual hardware. VMs, for example, are software instances of actual computers. Software-Defined Networks are virtualized networks.

There’s more to successfully passing the CCSP exam than reading a test-prep book. Here are some tips to help you prepare for the exam — from the start of your journey until test day. Brush up on the prerequisites Cloud Computing and Information Security are two topics that involve a great deal of knowledge from different fields within Information Technology.

It would be great if you could just do your security magic, and nothing bad would ever happen. Unfortunately, you can’t fix every vulnerability or stop every threat . . . so it’s important that you’re prepared to handle whatever comes your way. For the CCSP exam, you need to know the basics of incident handling.

You can rely on many of the same principles from traditional IT models when designing secure cloud computing environments, but the cloud does present additional considerations. For the CCSP exam, remember that cloud computing comes with its own set of benefits and challenges in managing the data lifecycle, disaster recovery, and business continuity planning.

Each of the cloud service categories — IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS — all provide access to data storage, but each model uses its own storage types. Each of the service categories and storage types comes with its own specific threats and security considerations. As you design and implement your cloud data storage architecture, you must consider what service category you’re building or implementing and the unique characteristics of data security associated with that service model.

These core security concepts are crucial to passing the CCSP exam. Discover the most fundamental security topics and begin to set the stage for what you need to know to pass the exam. You need to understand a few foundational principles before embarking on your CCSP journey. The pillars of information security Information security is the practice of protecting information by maintaining its confidentiality, integrity, and availability.