NetDiligence^®, a leading cyber risk assessment and data breach services company, and CloudeAssurance, Inc., a division of eFortresses, Inc., announced a strategic alliance to address the issue of risk and liability inherent in the use of third-party cloud service providers (CSPs).

As part of the agreement, NetDiligence will begin including CloudeAssurance’s cloud security scores as a value-added component of its enterprise-wide cyber risk assessment services which serve the risk management needs of cyber liability insurers and their policyholders.

“A major concern for cyber liability insurers and insured organizations that rely on cloud computing is whether the cloud service provider has appropriate data security and privacy practices in place,“ explained Mark Greisiger, president of NetDiligence. “NetDiligence and CloudeAssurance have each been actively working to identify and quantify cloud risk. It makes sense for us to join forces to elevate the issue and promote awareness of the risks associated with cloud computing.”

“The high adoption rate of cloud computing services has created a real need for an industry-wide standard of due-diligence management of security, compliance, cloud governance and cloud risk management on the part of cloud service providers, cloud customers, cloud auditors and cloud brokers,” noted Taiye Lambo, founder of CloudeAssurance. “This, in turn, has created a need for cloud assessment and certification, so that cloud service providers can prove they adhere to appropriate and reasonable standards of data security and privacy. We’re delighted that NetDiligence has chosen to include data from our Cloud Security Benchmark Study in the hundreds of cyber risk assessments they conduct each year.”

The inclusion of CloudeAssurance cloud security scores in NetDiligence’s popular cyber risk assessments is the first of several joint initiatives being planned by the two companies. On April 2, 2014, Mark Greisiger will be participating with Taiye Lambo in CloudeAssurance’s next webinar Cloud Security Benchmark: Top 10 Cloud Service Providers Q1 2014 scheduled for April 2, 2014 at 11:00am EDT.