An Analysis of Cloud Certifications’ Performance on Privacy
Protections
Tian Wang
and Masooda Bashir
School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 501 E. Daniel St., Champaign, U.S.A.
Keywords: Cloud Computing, Privacy Protections, Cloud Certifications.
Abstract: Cloud computing is an evolving paradigm that changes the way humans share, store, and access their
information in digital form. Although cloud computing offers tremendous benefits, it also brings security and
privacy challenges. Certifications have been developed by governments and authorized organizations as a
new approach to protecting users’ information in the cloud. While the security controls in the certifications
have been well established and widely applied, the privacy protections provided by certifications are still
ambiguous and yet to be examined. In this study, we identified and selected four cloud certifications that are
commonly used for certifying the security and privacy of cloud computing, and we evaluated their
performance on privacy protections specifically to understand how privacy is treated in these certifications
according to their existing controls. Our research reveals a lack of privacy controls in the current certifications
and inadequate privacy-related content; even when present, such content is not clear or is difficult to
distinguish from security controls. Results demonstrate that without having a set of baseline privacy protection
criteria or standards, it is very challenging to determine cloud certifications’ performance and adequacy for
privacy protections. It also points to the urgent need for the development of a consistent and comprehensive
privacy framework that can be utilized for such evaluations.
1 INTRODUCTION
Representing a new revolution in information
technology (IT), cloud computing provides a novel
approach for using and offering IT resources that
anyone can access on demand via the Internet
(Leymann & Fritsch, 2009). The implementation of
cloud computing offers many potential advantages in
the real world. For example, Internet of Things (IoT)
devices collect information from various physical
devices and virtual sensors, all of which provide a
wealth of knowledge for improving personalized
recommendations and customer experiences.
Similarly, state and local governments can use data-
analytic results collected from cloud-connected
resources to make strategic decisions about the
placement of traffic lights, the construction of new
roads or bridges, and other future plans for smart
cities (Perera et al., 2015).
However, although collecting and storing large
amounts of data in the cloud can be a tremendous
asset for any given organization, it can also pose
many challenges to privacy-preserving data practices.
In particular, big data analytics in cloud environments
have implications for user privacy at all stages of the
cloud computing process. The cloud data collected by
IoT devices may collect users’ personal and sensitive
information, ranging from information on their health
conditions to their financial status, by recording daily
activities in a way that can violate users’ privacy
(Perera et al., 2015). Therefore, there is a pressing
need to develop privacy-related policies and
technologies that not only provide baseline
protections but also unify standards and potential
regulatory efforts to ensure a higher level of privacy-
preserving data management techniques (Gahi &
Mouftah, 2016).
Many different approaches have been developed
and applied to improve information security and
privacy in cloud computing, and one important
approach is the use of certifications, which serve as
a mechanism for self-assessment and mitigate the
trust gap between organizations and users by
providing assurance that a CSP is doing correct and
appropriate things. A certification is like an “ethical
handshake” indicating trust between the CSP and the
certification authority. Display of certifications
contributes to the ability of organizations to gain
Wang, T. and Bashir, M.
An Analysis of Cloud Certifications’ Performance on Privacy Protections.
DOI: 10.5220/0010783200003120
In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Information Systems Security and Privacy (ICISSP 2022), pages 299-306
ISBN: 978-989-758-553-1; ISSN: 2184-4356
Copyright
c
2022 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
299
public trust as well. In addition, certifications and
standards can be applied to set the requirements for
the assessment and selection of solutions that meet
the expected levels of information assurance and data
privacy throughout the world (Guilloteau &
Venkatesen, 2013). From the point of view of
information privacy in the cloud, a certification is a
credential that confirms a CSP has achieved certain
characteristics, qualities, and/or status by following
some form of assessment or audit in accordance with
established requirements or standards. Currently,
some of the best-known and most-used certifications
related to information security and privacy include
ISO/IEC 27001, SOC2, C5, and FedRAMP. While
some of those certifications (i.e., ISO) have been
around for over a decade, some like the C5 and
FedRAMP have appeared more recently.
However, the great diffusion and fast-moving
development of cloud computing applications and
services have brought new threats to both security and
privacy of information, weakening the protection that
existing standards can offer. Traditional baseline
privacy protection mechanisms offered by standards
and certifications do not adequately address the fast-
paced growth of data analytics. Moreover, the line
between privacy and security is sometimes blurry.
Previous studies have evaluated the overall
completeness of certifications with respect to the
level of security protection that they provide (Di
Giulio et al., 2017), but to the best of our knowledge,
there has been no current or published research that
examines the adequacy of the existing cloud
computing certifications with respect to information
privacy specifically. Privacy protections become
even more difficult to achieve because data privacy
competes with constraints related to transparency and
accountability of organizational management systems
(Gai et al., 2016). As the collection of personal data
has exponentially increased, the number of data
breaches has also risen resulting in privacy harms.
Litigation is currently not an effective solution for
privacy infringement. For example, the majority of
data breach court claims have been unsuccessful, with
courts reluctant to recognize a privacy harm without
an economic loss (Solove & Citron, 2018).
Whie most frameworks blur the line between
security and privacy, it becomes very difficult to
distinguish whether the requirement is meant for
security, privacy, or both based on previous literature
study (Sharma et al., 2020). Therefore, it is important
to evaluate how information privacy is handled and
protected in various cloud certifications. In this study,
we propose a scientific and systematic analysis of
four certifications: ISO/IEC 27001, FedRAMP,
SOC2, and C5. These four certifications are selected
since they have been widely used in cloud computing
evaluation (Di Giulio et al., 2017). For example, any
CSP that provides cloud services to federal agencies
is required to have a FedRAMP Authorization to
Operate (ATO), and the C5 standard has been
conceived as a guideline that CSPs could use to
improve their cloud systems. To analyze the four
certifications, all the controls (refer to the measures
that provide information protection) are retrieved and
evaluated. The goal of this study is to understand
whether various types of privacy controls are
provided or missing for each of the four common
certifications mentioned above, and how the four
certifications perform on privacy protections in
general. We believe that the results from this study
mark an important step towards identifying privacy
protection weaknesses in the certifications and
highlighting improvements needed to meet privacy
requirements and ensure data protection.
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
This paper builds on previous research studies into
privacy issues and protections in cloud computing. A
review paper by Lar et. al (2011) provided an
overview of the security and privacy challenges in
public cloud computing, as well as considerations that
organizations should take when outsourcing data,
applications, and infrastructure to a public cloud
environment. Similarly, in their survey study, Kumar
et al. (2016) introduced a detailed analysis of current
cloud security and privacy problems, including
various existing approaches related to data encryption
and message authentication. The study also pointed
out some issues and challenges in cloud data
processing. Another review paper by Sun et al. (2014)
explored questions that should be addressed when
considering data security and privacy in cloud
computing; for example, how to enable users to have
control over their data in cloud, how to guarantee user
data replications in a consistent state, and which party
is responsible for ensuring compliance with legal
requirements regarding personal information.
It is important for cloud certifications to address
privacy considerations in their content and controls as
an approach to enhance cloud data protection.
Previous research by Kang et al. pointed out that
personal information protections were missing in one
cloud security certification (ISO) and suggested
adding the measures covered by the Personal
Information Protection Act (Kang & Kwon, 2019).
The research study by Anisettic et al. (2018) proposed
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300
a cloud certification scheme based on the continuous
verification of model correctness. To have a
trustworthy certification process, the proposed
scheme was expected to involve property
authorization-based privacy and property storage
confidentiality. Similarly, Karkouda et al. (2018)
proposed a scheme that would guarantee data
availability and confidentiality, minimize the
dependency of CSPs, and enable data analytics in the
cloud without post processing by the client.
As the client of cloud services, individual users
also express their demands on the privacy protections
provided by certifications. In a prior work, Teigeler et
al. (2018) explained the concept of Customer
Pressure, that customers will prefer to use cloud
services from companies who participate in a
continuous certification, and they demand the
companies to meet continuously technical, security,
and privacy requirements. Specifically, users showed
their concerns on cloud storage privacy that they
believed the service providers were responsible for
data loss (Lansing et al., 2013). While privacy is one
of the criteria for scaling and empirically ranking
various quality and trust assurance for consumer
cloud service (Ion et al., 2011), it is necessary for
CSPs to develop appropriate techniques and
implement privacy protections to gain users’ trust.
One of the methods proposed by Lins et al. (2016) is
to involve automated monitoring and auditing
techniques and transparent provision of audit relevant
information to verify CSPs’ ongoing adherence to
certification requirements.
3 METHOD
The first step is to retrieve all the controls, which are
the measures that protect the confidentiality,
integrity, and availability of information, from the
four certifications: ISO/IEC 27001, FedRAMP,
SOC2, and C5. To improve overall understanding of
privacy protections provided by the certifications, in
this study, we evaluated each control in the four
certifications based on its name, definition, and
relevant content, and then identified the controls that
may be relevant to privacy, either explicitly or
implicitly. The controls in each certification were
classified into three categories: explicit privacy
controls, implicit privacy controls, and controls
irrelevant to privacy. For each of the four
certifications (ISO/IEC 27001, SOC2, C5, and
FedRAMP), the number of controls under each
category, as well as the field of privacy the control is
related to (if applicable), were recorded for further
comparison and evaluation.
3.1 Data Pre-processing
Before evaluating the controls in the certifications,
we retrieved the full content of the four certifications
that were examined and compared in this study.
Although some of the certifications have the updated
or more comprehensive version that may include
privacy-related controls, considering the public
availability, Table 1 described the version of each
certification (published year) used for this study and
total number of controls in each certification.
Table 1: List of the 4 certifications for this study.
Certification
Name
Published
Year
Total # of
Controls
ISO/IEC 27001 2013 114
SOC2 2017 61
C5 2020 121
FedRAMP 2012 168
3.2 Explicit Privacy Controls
Explicit privacy controls are defined as controls that
explicitly include the keyword “privacy” or other
words/phrases directly refer to privacy in the control
name, definition, or relevant content (i.e.,
supplementary information, additional requirements).
Since there exist many words and phrases that may
have a similar meaning to privacy, in addition to the
word “privacy” itself, other terms private”,
“confidentiality”, “personal information”, “data
protection”, and “data breachwere also included in
the evaluation criteria.
After identifying the explicit privacy terms, we
examined the full content of each control in the four
certifications by running an automated Python script
to detect the keywords, recorded the controls
including the terms mentioned above as the explicit
privacy controls, and then removed those controls
from the original documents (the control would be
excluded once it was classified into one of the
categories since it cannot be both explicit and
implicit).
3.3 Implicit Privacy Controls
Similar to the process of identifying explicit privacy
controls, the first step was to create a list of
terminologies that may imply privacy protections as
the evaluation criteria for implicit privacy controls.
An Analysis of Cloud Certifications’ Performance on Privacy Protections
301
To retrieve the relevant terms, we searched for
publicly available documents that may include any
privacy-related words and phrases. The privacy-
related terms selected for this study were drawn from
multiple sources, including privacy glossaries,
lexicon, and online public dictionaries. The selected
sources included the following:
Data Protection Authority (DPA) Glossary.
International Association of Privacy Professionals
(IAPP) Glossary of Privacy Terms.
National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) Glossary.
Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)
Standards Lexicon. Note that RIT Standards
Lexicon was selected as a source considering the
overlap between security and privacy.
Online public dictionary: Merriam-Webster,
dictionary.com, vocabulary.com.
After identifying sources, we reviewed the content for
each documentation and recorded any potentially
relevant privacy-related terms. A privacy term was
selected if it appeared under a section of the content
related to privacy (i.e., privacy requirements, privacy
issues), or if it was from a source specifically
developed for privacy (i.e., IAPP Glossary of Privacy
Terms). We continued the process by identifying and
collecting the terminology from other sections that
may also imply privacy based on our understanding.
For example, some terms were introduced under the
cybersecurity category, but the definition of the term
involved both security and privacy perspectives. We
also reviewed online public dictionaries to collect any
additional privacy synonyms by reading the
definitions. After creating the initial list of privacy
terms, four researchers examined the relevancy of
each term, and determined if it should be included or
removed from the list.
The finalized list included 83 privacy terms
(including both words and phrases), which we used to
identify implicit privacy controls in each certification.
We ran an automated script for a second round to
detect if the keywords from the finalized list were
included in the controls. As with the process of
defining explicit privacy controls, once the control
was identified as implicit privacy controls, we
recorded those controls and removed them from the
original documents.
3.4 Controls Irrelevant to Privacy
After excluding the explicit privacy controls and
implicit privacy controls in each certification, the
remaining controls in each certification were
automatically classified as controls irrelevant to
privacy.
4 RESULTS
Table 2 shows the number of controls under each
category and the percentage of such controls over the
total number of controls for each of the four
certifications.
Table 2: Overview of controls in each certification.
Certification # of
Explicit
Controls
# of
Implicit
Controls
# of
Controls
Irrelevant
to Privacy
ISO/IEC
27001
2
(1.75%)
13
(11.40%)
99
(86.84%)
SOC2 24
(39.34%)
12
(19.67%)
25
(40.98%)
C5 20
(16.53%)
37
(30.58%)
64
(52.89%)
FedRAMP 3
(1.79%)
14
(8.33%)
151
(89.88%)
A more detailed comparison of the four
certifications based on the number of controls is
shown in Figure 1. According to the results shown in
the bar chart, SOC2 includes the highest percentage
of explicit privacy controls, as well as the highest
percentage of overall privacy-related controls, and C5
includes the highest percentage of implicit privacy
controls. However, privacy-related controls are rarely
identified in either ISO/IEC 27001 or FedRAMP.
Figure 1: Percentage of controls in each certification.
4.1 ISO/IEC 27001
ISO/IEC 27001 includes 2 explicit privacy controls
(confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements,
privacy and protection of personally identifiable
information) and 13 implicit privacy controls (listed
in Table 3). The implicit privacy controls in ISO/IEC
0.00%
20.00%
40.00%
60.00%
80.00%
100.00%
ISO/ IE C 270 01 SOC2 C5 FedRAMP
Percentage of Controls in Each Certification
% of Privacy Explicit Cont rols % of Privacy Implicit Controls
% of Controls Irrelevant to Privacy
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27001 are related to access (access control,
information and user access), authentication,
collection, disclosure, disposal, and identification.
Table 3: Implicit privacy controls in ISO/IEC 27001.
Field related to
privacy
Controls
Access control Access control policy
Secure log-on procedures
Access control to program
source code
Authentication Management of secret
authentication information of
users
Use of secret authentication
information
Collection Collection of evidence
Disclosure Classification of information
Securing application services on
public networks
Disposal Disposal of media
Secure disposal or reuse of
equipment
Identification Identification of applicable
legislation and contractual
requirements
Information access Teleworking
User access User access provisioning
4.2 SOC2
SOC2 includes 24 explicit privacy controls.
Examples of the explicit privacy controls are listed as
below:
C1.2 (“The entity disposes of confidential
information to meet the entity’s objectives related
to confidentiality.”)
CC2.3 (“The entity communicates with external
parties regarding matters affecting the functioning
of internal control.”)
CC7.3 (“The entity evaluates security events to
determine whether they could or have
resulted…”)
CC7.4 (“The entity responds to identified security
incidents by executing a defined incident…”)
CC8.1 (“The entity authorizes, designs, develops
or acquires, configures, documents…”)
C1.1 (“The entity identifies and maintains
confidential information to meet the entity…”)
P1.1 (“The entity provides notice to data subjects
about its privacy practices to meet the entity…”)
P2.1 (“The entity communicates choices available
regarding the collection, use, retention…”)
P3.1 (“Personal information is collected
consistent with the entity objectives related to
privacy.”)
SOC2 also includes 12 implicit privacy controls
(shown in Table 4). The implicit privacy controls in
SOC2 are related to access control, anonymity,
disposal, data loss prevention, identification, risk
assessment and management, and vulnerability.
Table 4: Implicit privacy controls in SOC2.
Field related
to privacy
Controls
Anonymous CC2.2 (“The entity internally
communicates information, ...”)
Identification CC3.2 (“The entity identifies risks to
the achievement of its objectives…”)
CC3.4 (“The entity identifies and
assesses changes that could…”)
Risk
assessment
CC5.1 (The entity selects and
develops control activities that
contribute…”)
A1.2 (“The entity authorizes, designs,
develops or acquires, implements,
…”)
Access
control
CC6.1 (“The entity implements
logical access security software, …”)
CC6.3 (“The entity authorizes,
modifies, or removes access to data,
software, …”)
Disposal CC6.5 (“The entity discontinues
logical and physical protections over
…”)
Data loss
prevention
CC6.7 (“The entity restricts the
transmission, movement, and removal
of information to…”)
Vulnerability CC7.1 (“To meet its objectives, the
entity uses detection and monitoring
procedures to identify…”)
Risk
management
CC9.1 (“The entity identifies, selects,
and develops risk mitigation…”)
CC9.2 (“The entity assesses and
manages risks associated with…”)
4.3 C5
C5 includes 20 explicit privacy controls. Examples of
the explicit privacy controls include:
Risk Management Policy
Documentation, communication and provision of
policies and instructions
Confidentiality agreements
Asset Classification and Labelling
Capacity Management – Planning
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303
Data Protection and Recovery – Concept
Logging and Monitoring - Metadata Management
Concept
Managing Vulnerabilities, Malfunctions and
Errors -Penetration Tests
C5 includes 37 implicit privacy controls (examples of
controls are listed in Table 5). The implicit privacy
controls in C5 are related to access control,
appropriate safeguards, disclosure, encryption,
identity, identification, risk assessment and
management, surveillance, and vulnerability.
Table 5: Examples of implicit privacy controls in C5.
Field related
to privacy
Controls
Access control Authorization Mechanisms
Authentication Authentication mechanisms
Appropriate
Safeguards
Version Control
Disclosure Conditions for Access to or
Disclosure of Data in Investigation
Requests
Encryption Encryption of data for transmission
(transport encryption)
Identification Logging and Monitoring -
Identification of Events
Identity Policy for user accounts and access
rights
Risk
Assessment
Risk assessment, categorization, and
prioritization of changes
Risk
Management
Application of the Risk Management
Policy
Surveillance Surveillance of operational and
environmental parameters
Vulnerability Testing and Documentation of known
Vulnerabilities
4.4 FedRAMP
FedRAMP includes 3 explicit privacy controls
(Privacy Impact Assessment, Transmission
Confidentiality, and Error Handling), and 14 implicit
privacy controls (listed in Table 6). The implicit
privacy controls in FedRAMP are related to access
control, encryption, risk assessment, trust, and
confidentiality.
Table 6: Implicit privacy controls in FedRAMP.
Field related
to privacy
Controls
Access control Access Control Policy and
Procedures
Access Control for Mobile Devices
Physical Access Control
Access Control for Output Devices
Authentication Permitted Actions Without
Identification/ Authentication
Auditable Events
Identification and Authentication
Policy and Procedures
Device Identification and
Authentication
Cryptographic Module
Authentication
Encryption Media Storage
Risk
assessment
Risk Assessment
Risk Assessment Policy and
Procedures
Trust Trust Path
Confidential Personnel Screening
4.5 Summary
Overall, among the four certifications, SOC2 has the
best performance on privacy protections based on the
percentage of privacy-related controls. It not only
includes an additional section of criteria specifically
designed for privacy, but also mentions the data
subjects (users) in its content and emphasizes the
importance of protecting their information. Besides
SOC2, C5 has a higher percentage of privacy-related
controls, compared with the other two certifications.
However, most of these controls from C5 only
implicitly refer to privacy since C5 focuses primarily
on information security. For example, the control
“Encryption of sensitive data for storage” refers to the
procedures and technical safeguards established by
the CSP to encrypt cloud customers' data during
storage. Although the control is originally designed
as a security safeguard, the process of encrypting
customers’ data also implies privacy protections for
personal information. Thus, it is counted as implicit
privacy control in this case. Surprisingly, neither
ISO/IEC 27011 or FedRAMP has many controls
explicitly related to privacy, and both have a lower
percentage of implicit privacy controls, compared
with SOC2 and C5. This suggests that the concept of
privacy might be combined with security when
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304
developing the controls. Thus, explicit privacy
controls are rarely identified in these certifications.
In addition to the overall analysis of controls, for
the implicit privacy controls in these four
certifications, we recorded the field of privacy to
which that the controls are related. The number of
controls per certification for each field are shown in
Figure 2. As shown in the figure, all four
certifications mentioned “Access control” as part of
their privacy protections. Besides Access control,
“Authentication”, “Identification”, and “Risk
assessment” are the three fields with most implicit
privacy controls. The results once again imply that
privacy is often combined with security controls
instead of being explicitly implemented.
Figure 2: # of implicit privacy controls in each field.
5 DISCUSSION
Based on the results shown in the preceding section,
we conclude that most of the certifications analysed
in this study heavily emphasize security controls, and
privacy protections are rarely mentioned. The one
exception is SOC2, which includes an additional
section specifically focused on privacy protections
and offers actual privacy criteria so that privacy
protections can be addressed. However, most
privacy-related controls from other certifications are
often indirect and ambiguous, in that some mention
privacy only as part of the concept instead of directly
discussing it. Therefore, the certifications must define
their privacy controls more explicitly in the content to
address the privacy considerations adequately.
Another finding is that it is sometimes difficult to
distinguish between privacy and security when you
examine cloud certification controls. For example,
both C5 and FedRAMP include controls that provide
privacy protections (i.e., controls related to
encryption), even though it is not explicitly required
or stated. Although the techniques of encryption are
often used or required to help with protecting
information security, the process of information
would also help to protect users’ privacy by
restricting access to their personal and sensitive
information. Thus, we included such controls in our
assessment and coded them as Privacy-Implicit,
meaning that while the control is meant for security
protections, it also provides implicit privacy
protections. Also, since C5 was designed by the
Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) in
Germany to help organizations demonstrate
operational security against common cyber-attacks,
all the controls in C5 were originally developed as
security controls; therefore, many of the privacy-
related controls in C5 are based on information
security protections, with privacy being implied in the
content of the control.
A challenging aspect of our study is that, unlike
cloud security, cloud privacy is a new field without
widely applied or referenced existing guidelines or
standards. It was difficult for us to evaluate each
certification’s privacy performance because there was
neither much prior literature nor established
frameworks that could serve as the baseline for
evaluation. Although FIPPs has been applied for a
long time and been implemented in a variety of fields,
it has limitations because cloud computing
technologies developed so rapidly. Therefore, this
study points to the need to build a comprehensive and
systematic framework that includes all the essential
criteria for information privacy protections in cloud
computing as a standard for evaluating certifications
in the future.
6 STUDY LIMITATIONS
As mentioned above, the certification versions
analysed for this study were the most recent versions
that are publicly available online. We realize that it
would be ideal to use the most recent version of the
certifications, However, some of the updated
documentations are not publicly available online.
Therefore, we acknowledge that our results may be
influenced by this factor and hence it is possible that
there exist new updated versions of the four
certifications mentioned in this study that may
include privacy-specified controls in the content.
Another limitation of this study is that since we
did not have a widely applied guideline or standard to
evaluate the certification’s performance on privacy
protections, we defined a list of privacy terminologies
from multiple sources to help with examining the
relevancy of privacy for each control. However, it is
possible that some terms are missing from the list, or
that some terms may not be strongly related to privacy
under certain conditions. Results from this study still
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ISO/IEC 27001 SOC2 C5 FedRAMP
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305
need to be verified with a comprehensive standard to
ensure its effectiveness and accuracy.
7 FUTURE WORK
In conclusion, this study points out the need for
addressing privacy challenges in cloud environments,
and builds initial step towards developing a
comprehensive set of privacy controls which can be
used for assessing and comparing these four
certifications and their shortcomings. Results will
also benefit governments and industry when
comparing different certifications for their privacy
protections and selecting the appropriate one based on
specific needs.
For future studies, it is necessary to develop a
consistent and comprehensive framework for cloud
computing privacy protections in order to evaluate
and verify the certification performance in a more
accurate and effective way. We will continue to work
on analysing the content of cloud certifications with a
more inclusive selection of sources and continue
updating the results based on the latest version of the
certifications as they become available.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work has been supported by Cisco Inc. We want
to acknowledge and thank all of those who have
contributed to this work.
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