Center for Internet Security, Google Cloud Announce Strategic Alliance
The strategic alliance will advance the security and resilience of the public sector
EAST GREENBUSH. N.Y., April 20, 2023 – The Center for Internet Security, Inc. (CIS®) today announced the launch of the CIS & Google Cloud Alliance to help advance security and resilience for the broader technology ecosystem, with an emphasis on the public sector.
Public sector organizations can be particularly susceptible to cyber attacks because of limited resources and reliance on legacy infrastructure. The CIS & Google Cloud Alliance will combine the companies’ extensive experience to offer greater security to these organizations. For the last 20 years, CIS has been assisting U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) governments in securing their organizations against cyber threats and understands the challenges they face. Google Cloud will bring members and services from its Google Cybersecurity Action Team, including unique insights from its Threat Horizons reports and Mandiant’s leading threat intelligence resources, to help achieve better security for the broader technology ecosystem – especially as it relates to cloud posture and overall cybersecurity practices.
CIS is one of the industry’s premier voices on all things cybersecurity and has established a number of globally-recognized security frameworks – like the CIS Critical Security Controls® and CIS BenchmarksTM – and industry thought leadership efforts. CIS also operates the Multi-State and Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Centers (MS-ISAC® and EI-ISAC®), which support the rapidly changing cybersecurity needs of SLTT government organizations, including critical infrastructure subsectors like K-12 schools and elections offices.
Similarly, Google Cloud has a longstanding history of advancing cybersecurity and resilience across all verticals. It recently furthered this commitment by announcing plans to invest at least $10 billion over the next 5 years to strengthen cybersecurity. As part of this focus, alongside the CIS & Google Cloud Alliance, Google Cloud has also announced recent partnerships with industry organizations in other sectors like healthcare and financial services (Health-ISAC and FS-ISAC). The company also introduced its Google Public Sector division focused on helping U.S. public sector institutions – including federal, state, and local governments, and educational institutions – accelerate their digital transformations. Together, CIS and Google Cloud are uniquely positioned to support organizations through the complexities of their digital transformations.
“This partnership between CIS and Google is particularly exciting because it is bringing together two powerhouse perspectives on cybersecurity and applying them to the highly-targeted and historically cyber underserved community of U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial government organizations,” said Gina Chapman, Executive Vice President, Sales and Business Services at CIS. “The cybersecurity needs of the public sector demand best-in-class, cost-effective solutions that include implementation and operational support, and we look forward to how we can work together to support this community.”
“As two recognized leaders in the cybersecurity space, both CIS and Google Cloud have extensive experience helping organizations across all verticals and sizes,” said MK Palmore, Director, Office of the CISO at Google Cloud. “The launch of the CIS & Google Cloud Alliance is just the start in our collaboration and ability to help more organizations through these continual challenges.”
About CIS
The Center for Internet Security, Inc. (CIS®) makes the connected world a safer place for people, businesses, and governments through our core competencies of collaboration and innovation. We are a community-driven nonprofit, responsible for the CIS Critical Security Controls® and CIS Benchmarks™, globally recognized best practices for securing IT systems and data. We lead a global community of IT professionals to continuously evolve these standards and provide products and services to proactively safeguard against emerging threats. Our CIS Hardened Images® provide secure, on-demand, scalable computing environments in the cloud. CIS is home to the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (MS-ISAC®), the trusted resource for cyber threat prevention, protection, response, and recovery for U.S. State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial (SLTT) government entities, and the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center® (EI-ISAC®), which supports the rapidly changing cybersecurity needs of U.S. election offices. To learn more, visit CISecurity.org or follow us on Twitter: @CISecurity.