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PCI Logic and US-based Vigilant, Inc. announce a conference to be held in Toronto on May 7^th to promote collaborative exchange between US and Canadian organizations struggling to achieve best practices for Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance. The conference, organized by PCI Logic and endorsed by the Financial Management Institute of Canada, will be held at the Metropolitan Hotel in downtown Toronto.

The conference will feature keynote addresses by Kris Herrin, Chief Technology Officer at Heartland Payment Systems and Nick Galleto, National Leader, Information and Technology Risk Services, Deloitte Canada. The diverse body of participants and speakers will bring together representatives from credit card companies, consulting organizations, retailers, financial institutions, and a range of organizations whose business requires them to demonstrate the security of credit card transactions.

The conference will include sessions on executive challenges, strategic partnerships, global security trends, and enabling technologies and emerging trends, including cloud computing. Organizations can register online for this interactive session with industry leaders.

The PCI Canada Conference 2012 grew out of an initiative originally sponsored by the Ministry of Finance in British Columbia, which has held a series of similar events for the purpose of assisting government entities to achieve compliance with the PCI-DSS standard, which had been adopted in Canada in 2006.

“With all levels of Canadian merchants now subject to demonstrate PCI compliance, that series of events generated an outcry from the private sector for inclusion,” says Nicholas Krischanowsky, Partner, PCI Logic. “A steady stream of data breaches – including the most recent breach of Global Payment Systems – underscores the urgency, no matter which side of the border you’re on. Canadian and US companies alike face regulatory pressure and the corporate responsibility to provide better protection of consumer information, but are challenged to do this in the context of tight budgets, complex business and technological environments, and shortage of expertise. Through the sharing of best practices, we hope to make the road easier for all conference attendees.”

“It is critical to do everything we can in both the Canadian public and private sectors to elevate data security practices across the board. We enthusiastically support this initiative,” said Don Singer, Managing Director of the Financial Management Institute of Canada.

Joseph Magee, Chief Technology Officer of Vigilant, Inc., helps organizations track PCI-related and other security controls through IT security monitoring solutions. “Years of wrangling,” he says, “with PCI in the US have led practitioners to some important conclusions – particularly about the risk of viewing the achievement of compliance as a one-time event. Given the rapid changes in today’s complex IT environments, and constant advancements in the anatomy of malicious behavior, it’s critical that organizations take a continuous risk-based approach to ensure their security and monitoring controls are able to meet the challenge of the changing threat landscape. We look forward to joining with the other contributors to share what we’ve learned.”