Your organization can quickly deepen its understanding of the security controls of the Oracle cloud products it uses today or may use soon. To provide enhanced transparency, Oracle publishes cloud security assessments describing Oracle Cloud Applications, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and other cloud offerings. You can download these assessments today.

What are Consensus Assessment Initiative Questionnaires (CAIQs)?

A Consensus Assessment Initiative Questionnaire (CAIQ) is an industry standard assessment designed to document and help organizations assess the important administrative, technical and physical security controls that are relevant to cloud computing.

The CAIQ is defined by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a global organization dedicated to raising awareness of best practices to help secure cloud computing. The standard CAIQ template provides an effective way for your organization to compare the security practices of cloud providers.

Which security controls are documented in CAIQs?

CAIQs answer most common questions about access control, networks, software development and many other key areas. Security questions are categorized into “control domains”. This assessment encompasses a similar scope as popular compliance frameworks such as ISO 27001, an international standard which defines requirements for information security management systems.

  • Application & Interface Security
  • Audit & Assurance
  • Business Continuity Management and Operational Resilience
  • Change Control and Configuration Management
  • Cryptography, Encryption & Key Management
  • Data Security and Privacy Lifecycle Management
  • Datacenter Security
  • Governance, Risk and Compliance
  • Human Resources

 
  • Identity & Access Management
  • Infrastructure & Virtualization Security
  • Interoperability & Portability
  • Logging and Monitoring
  • Security Incident Management, E-Discovery, & Cloud Forensics
  • Supply Chain Management, Transparency, and Accountability
  • Threat & Vulnerability Management
  • Universal Endpoint Management

 

Sample CAIQ responses

It may be helpful to look at a few answers from Oracle CAIQs, so you can sample the depth of the assessment responses for Oracle cloud. These examples are for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI):

 

As shown above, some CAIQ responses link to the Corporate Security Practices in Oracle’s Trust Center for even greater depth of information and additional context.

Recommendations

Oracle’s published CAIQs will expand your understanding about how essential security control domains are implemented in Oracle Cloud. CAIQs are superior to buyer-specific questionnaires because they’re developed with broad industry input and because they use standard terms which support a common understanding of the security controls. Get started today!

  1. Download Cloud Consensus Assessment Initiative Questionnaires (CAIQs) from Oracle’s Trust Center.
  2. Contact Sales to request third-party compliance validation of the controls described in CAIQs.