Cloud Security Alliance Expands Frontier AI Leadership with New Research and Community Partnerships

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a not-for-profit organization committed to AI, cloud, and zero trust cybersecurity education, announced two strategic partnerships designed to accelerate industry collaboration and advance trusted AI adoption.The Nevada Institute of Cybersecurity at UNLV has joined the CSAI Foundation as a key research and academic partner, while RSAC will work with CSA and the CSAI Foundation to launch the AI Vulnerability Storm Summit, a strategic research and summit program designed to share meaningful AI research and education through community engagement.

Together, the partnerships strengthen CSA and the CSAI Foundation’s commitment to connecting research, industry expertise, and boots-on-the-ground practitioners to address the rapidly evolving security, governance, and resilience challenges associated with AI.

“As AI adoption accelerates, it’s imperative that organizations are able to collaborate and learn from trusted research and practical guidance,” said Jim Reavis, CEO and co-founder, Cloud Security Alliance. “These partnerships expand our ability to bring together academia, industry, and regional communities to advance AI security and resilience at a global scale.”

As CSA’s key research and academic partner, researchers from UNLV will collaborate on research initiatives, educational programs, and thought leadership designed to help organizations of all sizes better understand and address the technical, governance, and operational challenges of AI. The partnership will support the development of programs such as the AI Resilience Center of Excellence, the Catastrophic Risk Annex research initiative underwritten by Coefficient Giving, executive education for building AI-first cybersecurity programs and expanding the UNLV NIC Cyber Clinic for community AI security and safety assistance.

“Research and education are essential to navigating an AI landscape evolving at lightning speed,” said Dr. Juyeon Jo, Ph.D., founding executive director, UNLV’s Nevada Institute of Cybersecurity (NIC). “Through this partnership – driven by close collaboration with Dr. Greg Moody, Ph.D., NIC’s Director of Industry Partnerships – we’re excited to work alongside the Cloud Security Alliance and the CSAI Foundation to bridge academic research with real-world security challenges, delivering practical insights that help organizations innovate with confidence.”

Strengthening AI readiness through community engagement
Through its partnership with CSA and CSAI, RSAC is lending its leadership and experience to the AI Vulnerability Storm Summit, a strategic program that will enable CSA chapters and partner organizations to organize and host AI summits tailored to their local communities. The program will provide participating organizations with guidance, resources, and programming designed to foster collaboration among cybersecurity practitioners, business leaders, policymakers, researchers, and technology providers, and include a chapter starter kit and facilitator request form. Each summit’s proceedings will be anonymized and fed back into research to benefit the industry at-large.

By expanding access to high-quality AI events, the program will help regional communities share best practices, explore emerging challenges, and strengthen collaboration around AI governance, security, and resilience.

“We believe meaningful progress happens when communities come together to share knowledge and practical experience,” said Jen Easterly, CEO, RSAC. “Partnering with CSA to empower chapters and partners to host their own AI summits will help bring these important conversations to more organizations and regions around the world.”

With this announcement, RSAC is strengthening an already robust working partnership with CSA, having co-authored the Hugging Face Incident Initial Post-Mortem and The “AI Vulnerability Storm”: Building a “Mythos-ready” Security Program reports.

The partnerships with RSAC and UNLV’s Nevada Institute of Cybersecurity were announced at the Weathering the Storm: Cybersecurity in the AI Era summit, which they co-hosted.