PCI SSC North America community meeting Orlando - September 2012

The PCI Security Standards Council held it's 6th annual community meeting, this year at the Dolphin Resort in Disney World on September 12th - 14th.

Over 1,000 attendees were present over this multi-day event consisting primarily of QSA's and PCI participating organizations including payment processors, large retailers, airlines, telco's, and a variety of other industry categories where PCI compliance is a critical part of staying in business.

Bob Russo the PCI SSC general manager opened the event up as always with a fun and quirky theme, this year focussed on mountaineering with yodeling added for affect and reminded all delegates about the importance of working together as an industry to fight the ever persistent threat of fraud stemmed from security breaches involving cardholder data.

The mountaineering topic moved nicely to welcome the event's guest of honor, Jamie Clarke who delivered the keynote address "Above All Else". Jamie told a story of his climb to Mount Everest and how everyone should set audacious goals or "Your summit" as he called it and then go for it. A great motivational moment for all in attendance.

At the event generally there was plenty of talk about the Council's current initiatives including Point-to-Point Encryption, Qualified Integrators and Resellers (QIR), and the new Payment Card Industry Professional Program (PCIP). At various times throughout the event council representatives presented on stage and participated in panels which including Leon Fell (Director, Solution Standards), Lauren Hollaway (Director, Data Security Standards), Philip Jones (Standards Manager), Emma Sutcliffe (Standards Manager), Gill Woodcock (Director, Certification Programs), Troy Leach (CTO) and Ralph Spencer Poore (Director, Emerging Standards).

Many will be interested to know that the next version of the PCI Data Security Standard, PCI DSS 3.0 will be released in 2013 as part of the ongoing evolution and improvement of the standards.

A strong showcase of over 50 PCI compliance vendors were present for attendees to visit over the 2 final days of the event including AT&T, Bit9, Catbird ,Centrify, CloudPassage, ComForte 21, ControlScan, Cryptera, CSR, Element Payment Services, First Data, RSA, Fishnet Security, Halock Security Labs, Hytrust, Intel Corporation, IOActive, iScan Online, K3DES, Mako Networks, Mechant Link,

nCircle, Panoptic Security, PSC, Rapid7, Reliant Security, SAINT, SecureConnect, Semafone, Solutionary, Specialised Security Services, SSH Communications Security, Sunera, Terra Verde Services, Unified Compliance, Vanguard Integrity Professionals, Verifone, Callguard, Verizon, Voltage Security, ZZ Severs, Veritape, Protegrity, Shift4, Firehost, Vigitrust, ControlCase, Foregenix, Semafone, Security Metrics, Trustwave, SSH, Pixalert, XBridge, XYPro, Cisco,

Sysnet Global Solutions, Airtight Networks, Accuvant, TSYS, SISA, Proviti and of course Ground Labs with our live interactive display showcasing cardholder data discovery for merchants and QSAs.