Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of the Alibaba Group, announced today that it had completed its assessment for the Cloud Computing Compliance Controls Catalogue (C5) set out by the Federal Office for Information Security in Germany, also known as Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI). Alibaba Cloud is the world's first cloud provider to achieve this attestation with the additional requirements. The attestation covers Elastic Compute Service ("ECS"), Relational Database Service ("RDS"), Object Storage Service ("OSS"), Content Delivery Network ("CDN"), Server Load Balancer ("SLB"), Virtual Private Cloud ("VPC") and Alibaba Cloud Security available on Alibaba Cloud's regions in Singapore and Germany.

Alibaba Cloud's commitment to applying the highest levels of compliance in controls and security is shown by meeting the C5 standard that serves not only as a benchmark for the German market, but also increasingly as a benchmark for institutions across Europe. With the attestation, customers in German states can leverage the work performed under this BSI audit to comply with stringent local requirements and operate secure workloads using Alibaba Cloud services.

C5 is intended primarily for professional cloud service providers, their auditors and customers of the cloud service providers. It has 17 distinct control requirements that the cloud providers either have to comply with or meet defined minimum standards. It is a required assessment for working with the public sector in Germany and is being increasingly adopted by the private sector. The philosophy behind C5 is to unify the currently fragmented certification of cloud provisions that are measured against no agreed standards and possess no coherent oversight.

Arne Schönbohm, president of Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI), commented: "Information security is a critical success factor for the digitization. The C5 standard is a well-established and valuable decision guidance in the cloud market for all companies that want to use cloud services in the course of their digitization."

Only five cloud service providers have obtained the C5 under regular requirements to date, and the enhanced requirements that Alibaba Cloud has satisfied means that clients can be reassured that the company's services reach the highest international standards in a wide range of areas, from security to business continuity and from interoperability to data protection.

Simon Hu, Senior Vice President of Alibaba Group and President of Alibaba Cloud, commented, "Alibaba Cloud is fully committed to the highest standards in all aspects of our operations no matter where that might be in the world. We are proud to be the first company to meet the C5 additional requirements - something that should increase the trust placed in us by our growing client base not only in Germany, but also across the whole of Europe."

In addition to obtaining the C5, Alibaba Cloud is also a member of the Trusted Cloud organization, a program run by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). This is a further seal of quality that signifies trusted cloud services and underlines the commitment of Alibaba Cloud to growing its presence in the region and ensuring that it always operates at market leading standards.