News From the PCI Council

As all of you know (I hope), NACUBO is a Participating Organization with the PCI Security Standards Council. As NACUBO's representative, I get a periodic newsletter from the Council with updates and news. Often, these newsletters are pretty dull, but the current one has some interesting information I -- in my role as your representative to the PCI Council -- want to share with you.

There is good news (I hope) for all of you looking at virtualization as potential technology that can make PCI compliance easier and less costly. The good news is that the Virtualization Special Interest Group has delivered its report, and the Council will be releasing it soon. Here are some details from the newsletter:

I know you've all been eager for the Council to release the findings of the Virtualization Special Interest Group (SIG). Thanks to their hard work and collaboration with the Council's Technical Working Group, guidance on the use of virtualization in accordance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) will be released this month! We'll be hosting a webinar at the end of June to provide greater detail on the information supplement and address your questions.

To register for the Tuesday, June 28th session, click here.

To register for the Thursday, June 30th session, click here.

Another piece of good news is that the Prioritized Approach 2.0 (to match PCI DSS v 2.0) has been released. There are some good improvements in this version. If you are interested in this or if you wish to use it with the current version of PCI DSS, you can download a copy at the PCI Council's website.

The Council is offering a range of PCI training options. You can view the schedule (and pricing) for their instructor-led and online PCI training courses here. I guess I'd be remiss if I didn't also mention the Treasury Institute's own PCI training. The two are different: the Council focuses on the PCI DSS itself, where the Institute's workshops emphasize hands-on case studies of what other schools have done to become compliant (along with a PCI briefing). The training sessions are complimentary, so even if you have been to the Treasury Institute workshops, it may make sense to check out the Council's offerings.

Lastly, for all you PCI fanboys, you now can follow the comings and goings of the world of PCI on LinkedIn. Click here to follow the Council.