Thursday, January 14, 2016

Call for Presentations for the 2016 PCI Workshop

Hello Friends and Colleagues in PCI DSS Compliance.

It's that time of year again, the program committee is requesting your input and submissions for presentations at the 2016 Treasury Institute for Higher Education PCI DSS Workshop.

The theme of the 2016 PCI DSS Workshop is
PCI DSS: Working Together; Succeeding Together.

In many schools, PCI oversight is the responsibility of the Treasurer/Finance Office yet much of the deployment and implementation of PCI DSS is a matter best left to the experts in Information Technology and/or the IT Security Office. Successful and sustainable PCI DSS compliance requires the identification and planning of common goals between finance and technology. Achieving and maintaining compliance requires top quality teamwork and documentation between Treasury/Finance (the PCI oversight group), Information Technology, third party service providers, and the individual departments that accept cards.

Where has your school succeeded in closing the distance between Treasury/Finance and Information Technology? What documentation and communication success stories do you have to share? Share your challenges or your glorious successes (or even your dismal failures) in implementing and maintaining PCI DSS compliance in the face of ever changing threats and attacks.

Concurrent Educational Session Topic Ideas

(All sessions should emphasize the collaboration needed between Finance and Technology to succeed.)
  • Dealing with PCI DSS and Changes in Vendor Delivered Technology
  • PCI DSS and Third Party Vendors, a Push-me Pull-me Relationship
  • PCI DSS: Funding the "Unfunded Mandate"
  • PCI DSS Change Management for Finance
  • Innovative Scope Reducing Solutions
  • Learning a new language; "IT meet Treasury, Treasury meet IT"
The sessions are scheduled in one-hour time blocks. Your presentation should be shorter than that in order to allow for Q&A and time for folks to move between sessions that may be in different rooms.

Speakers from Higher Education will be reimbursed for their workshop registration and certain travel, lodging, and meal expenses (maximum one person reimbursed per session). Speakers from outside of Higher Education will receive a complimentary workshop registration.
 
See General Expense Reimbursement Guidelines for further information.

How Do I Submit a Proposal?

To prepare your proposal, come up with a suggested title, a brief description of your presentation, your school's name, your contact info and suggested co-presenters, if applicable.

Either send your proposal to me using the Contact Form in the right sidebar and I will forward it on, or use that same Contact Form to ask me to send you the Treasury Institute address for Ruth Harpool so that you can contact her directly. (Sorry, to avoid spam I rarely include addresses in this blog.)

The submission deadline is: February 1, 2016

This workshop will be a gathering of your friends and peers, so there is never a hostile audience. You will be welcomed warmly, even if you have never presented anywhere before.  We know that many of you have valuable experiences that we would love to hear about. So get in touch and propose a session for the 2016 PCI Workshop in Savannah, Georgia this May.



Friday, January 8, 2016

Older versions of Internet Explorer expire January 12

What's going on?

Microsoft announced this week that it will be ending its support for older versions of Internet Explorer (IE) on January 12, 2016. What does end of support mean? It means that starting on Tuesday, January 12 (Patch Tuesday), Microsoft will only provide technical support and security updates for the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a "supported" operating system.

The most recent version of IE is version 11, and almost every Windows system should be running that version. There are a few exceptions to this, such as some specialized or older versions of the Windows operating system, like Windows Server or Windows Embedded, which may be used on integrated point-of-sale systems. These exceptions are not able to run Windows 11 at this time. See the lifecycle link below for more information.

Note: All systems in your cardholder data environment must be running the most current versions of their operating systems and software. All patching must be up-to-date. This is required by PCI DSS requirement 6.2.

What is the impact of this announcement?

This means that if you are running an older version of IE on your desktop that you should upgrade to Windows 11 right away. If a new vulnerability is discovered in an older version of IE, that version will not receive a security patch to fix it. And unpatched systems are the primary targets of criminal hackers and malware. Internet Explorer 11 will continue to receive security updates, compatibility fixes, and technical support on Windows 7, Windows 8.1, and Windows 10.

More information

For questions, help, upgrade assistance, and other resources please see the End of Support announcement page at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/WindowsForBusiness/End-of-IE-support.

To learn more about exceptions and other supported operating systems read the Windows lifecycle FAQ sheet at https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle#gp/Microsoft-Internet-Explorer.