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In 2015, I published an addendum to our PCI DSS 4th Ed. book that covered version 3.1. I titled it, “PCI DSS 3.1: The Standard that Killed SSL” because that version removed the ability to use old and outdated versions of the standard in favor of the improved TLS standard originally released in January 1999. Now eight years later, we’re still struggling with moving past version 1.0 of TLS, something that the Council required after June 2018. Outdated versions of these protocols still exist in certain embedded devices, and are only allowed in limited scenarios. Version 4 of the standard pushed the remainder of TLS version requirements to your routine vulnerability scans—prioritized by the resulting CVSS score. You will find ...

Another semester has closed and the reviews are in. As always, I had one student who rails on their hatred of APA formatting and one student who loved it. OK, maybe not loved it, but mentioned that it made a positive impact on their journey. The goal of this post is to help provide some context on why I take points off of papers for poor APA formatting. If you are one of my current students reading this, please take some notes. I make APA 7th Ed. an optional text because there are freely available resources you can use to learn what you need to do. You should also use the services of the writing coach provided by the university ...

December is the month! PCI Compliance, 5th Edition is ready for pre-order and will be shipping on the 22nd. James & I are so excited to hear what you think! But of course, this project is several years in the making. Even before James & I sat down in early 2020 to hammer out where we wanted this to go, I’ve been involved in this book since the 2nd edition in 2009. Back in the old days, Microsoft Word was the tool we used to get things done. But we have such better options these days to collaborate on projects like this. As we talked with several industry folks about the project and our progress, one of you asked me ...

I’ve been a kindle reader for a very long time—pretty much since the first version of it. I traveled with one, had a waterproof case for the pool, and generally consumed the vast majority of my fiction reading on it. While my previous device was still cranking along just fine, the cases were not. After breaking my second waterproof case and learning they were not made anymore, I joined the masses and got a new Paperwhite Kindle. All was well for a while! It’s absolutely brilliant to read from outside, and I never had problems in normal light inside a house or building. I’ve recently started taking up some reading before bed to help slow things down in my brain ...