BSI certifies first two companies to CSA STAR Certification

BSI has completed its independent assessment of two companies to the new CSA STAR Certification scheme, with HP and Pulsant achieving Silver level. The CSA STAR Certification was developed to give prospective customers a benchmark to measure a cloud service provider’s security controls.
To get the CSA STAR Certification, each cloud service provider had to achieve ISO/IEC 27001 and be rigorously assessed to the CSA Cloud Control Matrix. There are 11 control areas within this matrix covering compliance, data governance, facility security, human resources, information security, legal, operations management, risk management, release management, resilience and security architecture. Each control was scored on a specific maturity and was measured against 5 management principles, giving a total that gave HP and Pulsant a CSA STAR Certification Silver award.
Gursharan Virdi, UK&I ISO/IEC 27001 Programme Manager, HP said “Being a major cloud service provider, we fully understood the importance of achieving CSA STAR Certification. This certification provides further assurance to our UK Government customers that we have gone the additional mile to differentiate our cloud offering from that of our peers.”

Fergus Kennedy, Head of Compliance and Information Systems, Pulsant commented “The CSA STAR Certification offers a path to improvement that’s truly rigorous. And because it is audited by an independent body, it holds infinitely more weight than existing self-assessment/self-declaration models. It is a testament to the Pulsant teams who design, deploy and manage our cloud platform that we were able to be one of the first to achieve this certification.”

Suzanne Fribbins, Risk Management Specialist at BSI adds “HP and Pulsant should be proud of their achievement in being the first to obtain the CSA STAR Certification. It demonstrates their dedication to providing a secure cloud service. By obtaining this certification it creates a transparency in the industry that will help consumers and businesses to evaluate the performance of a cloud service provider and offer reassurance that specific cloud security risks have been addressed. ”

Daniele Catteddu, EMEA Managing Director for the Cloud Security Alliance concludes: "I'm very happy that we have the first two companies awarded with a CSA STAR Certificate. HP and Pulsant are to be considered as pioneers and I'm sure that the market will reward them for their commitment to security and privacy."