How to get the CCSK v4 Certificate

Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK) is a certificate issued by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) that focuses on cloud security.

CCSK is considered a good start towards the more advance ISACA’s certification CCSP. You can read more about how to get CCSP certification.

This post was written on April 2024 and does not plan to be updated regularly. Please take into account that info may be outdated since it was written, so though the information may still valuable please verify it.

This post answers to questions like “how to get certified in CCSK”, “how to earn the CCSK certificate” or “how to become a CCSK”.

CCSK v4 Certificate

CCSK Certificate Overview

CCSK certificate overview:

Cert type: certificate
Issued for a single certificate version: yes
Expiration date: N/A
Certificate requirements: passing CCSK exam once
Maintenance requirements: none

CCSK is a certificate, what means that it doesn’t have an expiration date.

It doesn’t have any maintenance requirement like achieving CPEs (Continouing Professional Education) or paying an AMF (Annual Maintenance Fee).

Nevertheless, take into account that you get the CCSK certificate for a specific version. If a newer version of CCSK is released, you will still have the CCSK but for an outdated version.

The only requirement to get the certification is passing the CCSK exam.

No professional experience is required to get the certification. However, having general IT security experience helps you to prepare the exam.

CCSK Versions

CCSK are issued in different versions.

As of February 2024, CCSK v4 is the latest version..

CCSK v5 is announced for July 2024.

CCSK Certificate Domains

CCSK certificate covers the following domains:

Domain 1 Cloud Computing Concepts and Architectures
Domain 2: Governance and Enterprise Risk Management
Domain 3: Legal Issues, Contracts and Electronic Discovery
Domain 4: Compliance and Audit Management
Domain 5: Information Governance
Domain 6: Management Plane and Business Continuity
Domain 7: Infrastructure Security
Domain 8: Virtualization and Containers
Domain 9: Incident Response
Domain 10: Application Security
Domain 11: Data Security and Encryption
Domain 12: Identity, Entitlement, and Access Management

You can explore these domains on this external link.

CCSK v4 Certificate Exam

CCSK v4 Exam Preparation Material

CCSK questions were based on the following key documents:

These documents were freely available on CCSK website.

Please ensure you have downloaded them when doing the exam.

As of 2024, latest CSA Guidance for Cloud Computing version was 4.

As of 2024, latest CSA Cloud Control Matrix (CCM) version was 4. CCM v4 combines CCM v4 controls and CAIQ v4, among other documentation.

As of 2024, there was a single version for ENISA Cloud Computing Benefits, Risks, and Recommendations for Information Security, issued in 2009.

The CSA website offered a CCSK Preparation Kit bundle. As of 2024-04, it contained outdated material as its released date was 2018-04-10 and it has never been updated since then; for instance, it contained CCM v3 instead of CCM v4. While this situation persists, I would recommend to download each document individually instead of downloading the CCSK Preparation Material bundle.

You can buy or read the preparation guide book:

Graham Thompson; “CCSK Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge All-in-One Exam Guide”, McGraw Hill, 2020

CCSK v4 Exam Characteristics

CCSK exam overview:

Number of questions: 60
Passing score: 48 (80%)
Time: 90 minutes
Time per question: 1m30s
Presence: remote only
Type: open book

Because the exam time is short for the number of questions, though it is open book you will not have much time to look up for questions.

As it is an open book exam, you needed to ensure you have downloaded the preparation material locally before taking the exam.

CCSK v4 Exam Price

In 2023, the price of an exam token for CCSK v4 was 395 USD.

If you bought the book “CCSK Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge All-in-One Exam Guide” and use by a voucher included inside, you got a 10% discount and got a final price of 355.50 USD.

An exam token includes 2 tests attempts for a single exam.

CCSK v4 Exam Registration

To register to CCSK exam, follow this steps:

Visit the CSA exams page
Sign up (if you haven’t done it before) or sign in
Find the corresponding CCSK exam, and click on “Purchase exam”
Enter billing information

If you have bought the “CCSK Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge All-in-One Exam Guide”, you may use the MCGRAW2020 discount voucher.

CCSK Exam Attendance

Ensure you are time enough in advance.

External References

ClubCloudComupting; “Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge (CCSK)“; ClubCloudComputing
CSA; “CCSK Exam overview“; CSA
Graham Thompson; “CCSK Certificate of Cloud Security Knowledge All-in-One Exam Guide”, McGraw Hill, 2020