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ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 38 Cloud computing and distributed platforms Plenary highlights

The SC 38 held its second in-person plenary since March 2020. It opened its plenary week with warm welcome and greetings by George Sfinas (Standards Australia) and Professor Michael Brünig (HoS ITEE, UQ) at the wonderful campus of The University of Queensland in Brisbane Australia.

The plenary contained a full agenda, with the following main topics under consideration:

  • New topics of investigation as preliminary work items (PWI),
  • the commencement of a new technical report, and
  • the continued collaboration with other liaisons to SC 38 that include local outreach of SC 38.

One of the duties of SC 38 is to continue standards development in the area of cloud computing and distributed platforms. With that, SC 38 approved the commencement of a new Technical Report (TR) 10822-1 on Multi-cloud management – Part 1: Overview and use cases. The scope of this is to provide an overview of the management challenges and objectives encountered in multi-cloud deployments along with management activities that can be undertaken to address and implement these management challenges and objectives. Additionally, this project will provide use cases with user and functional views to further explain the multi-cloud management challenges and activities. 

In addition, SC 38 approved 2 new PWIs on dataspaces and customer business continuity and resilience. The PWI on dataspaces will investigate the concept of dataspaces created for the purpose of data sharing, including characteristics such as trust created through agreed policies, models, technologies and processes and  examine the need to standardize dataspaces vocabulary, concepts, and characteristics. The second PWI on customer business continuity and resilience is investigating the need for customer guidance when implementing their business continuity and resilience plans while processing their core business functions in cloud computing and distributed platforms during contingencies, including natural disasters, attacks, and pandemic situations. This PWI will also examine concentration risk and its potential impact on business continuity and resilience through the use of cloud computing and distributed platforms.

From the collaboration aspect, SC 38 reviewed the first draft of the revision of ISO/IEC 27017 Information technology — Security techniques — Code of practice for information security controls based on ISO/IEC 27002 for cloud services with the intent for providing comments to align the revision with current SC 38 standards. Through the work of the SC 38 AdHoc, SC 38 approved a set of comments for submission of the first working draft out for review.

The SC 38/AG 1 - Advisory Group for Stakeholder Engagement continued to evangelize the work of SC 38 by participating in the CSA – Australia Chapter event, Cloud Security Alliance Australia Summit 2023.  The SC 38 Chair (Anish Karmarkar) and the SC 38/AG 1 Convenor (John Messina) gave a presentation on SC 38 to the CSA Australia Summit attendees. In addition, SC 38/AG 1 organized a social event with attendees from local industry and academia where the SC 38 participants and the local experts were able to exchange ideas around the needs of the industry for standards within the cloud computing and distributed platforms.

SC 38 closed the plenary with its appreciation to its host and to all the attendees and participants as the work produced by SC 38 is all due to its leaders and participants alike.

Next plenary is planned to take place between September 18-22, 2023, in Washington D.C.

The INCITS Technical Committee on Cloud Computing serves as the US TAG to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 38, Cloud Computing and Distributed Platforms. The TC covers standardization in the areas of Cloud Computing and Distributed Platforms including:

  • Foundational concepts and technologies,
  • Operational issues, and
  • Interactions among Cloud Computing systems and with other distributed systems.

INCITS Cloud Computing serves as the focus, proponent, and systems integration entity on Cloud Computing, Distributed Platforms, and the application of these technologies.

Interested in becoming a participant and a member? Find out more information on membership in the INCITS Technical Committee on Cloud Computing here (https://www.incits.org/participation/membership-info).