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Cloud Security Alliance (CSA)

Overview

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is a not-for-profit organization focused on defining and promoting best practices for secure cloud and, increasingly, AI computing. Within the agentic AI space, CSA's AI Organizational Responsibilities Working Group publishes research artifacts that establish testing, governance, and threat-modeling standards for Agentic AI systems — positioning CSA as one of the industry standards bodies shaping safe agentic deployment alongside NIST and Google SAIF.

Key Artifacts

Agentic AI Red Teaming Guide

Published August 2025, this guide defines a 12-category threat taxonomy and a four-phase (Preparation → Execution → Analysis → Reporting) testing methodology specifically for autonomous, multi-step, tool-using AI agents — extending traditional LLM red teaming to cover the full agentic action chain. See the full breakdown: Agentic AI Red Teaming Guide (CSA).

MAESTRO

MAESTRO (Multi-Agent Environment, Security, Threat, Risk, and Outcome) is CSA's multi-layered threat-modeling framework for Agentic AI — distinct from and complementary to the Red Teaming Guide's testing focus. MAESTRO addresses:

  • Evaluation and Observability — detecting anomalies, poisoned datasets, evasion techniques
  • Deployment and Infrastructure — compromised container images, orchestration attacks
  • Agent Frameworks — backdoor attacks, input validation exploits, supply chain vulnerabilities
  • Data Operations — data poisoning, exfiltration, tampering, compromised RAG pipelines

AI Organizational Responsibilities: Governance, Risk Management, Compliance, and Cultural Aspects

A companion artifact from the same working group addressing organizational-level AI governance structures, risk management processes, and compliance practices.

Relationship to Other Standards

CSA's agentic AI artifacts complement rather than replace other security frameworks referenced in this wiki:

Body Focus Relationship to CSA
NIST AI RMF Risk-based governance across the AI lifecycle CSA's Red Teaming Guide calls out alignment with NIST AI RMF as a future-outlook priority
Google SAIF Secure AI development/deployment foundation Both share the three-layer (policy/guardrails/monitoring) defense philosophy
Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) Open standards (MCP, AGENTS.md) under the Linux Foundation CSA artifacts are testing/governance guidance rather than protocol standards

See Also

References