Today I'm joined by a panel of current Principal Participating Organizations, or PPOs. The Principal PO program is one of three levels of participation with the Council and defined as a strategic level of leadership and influence with the Council. PPOs get access to exclusive strategy sessions with the Executive Committee, with PCI Council staff, and stakeholders to discuss standards direction, drive technical discussions, and have direct input into Council initiatives.

Hello and welcome to our podcast series, Coffee with the Council. I'm Andrew Jamieson, VP, Distinguished Standards Architect for the PCI Security Standards Council. And I'll be your host today for an exciting panel discussion about the current state of cryptography.

I'm joined today by some cryptography experts, who I originally brought together at the 2025 North America Community Meeting in Fort Worth, Texas. You're going to hear a very good discussion today. I invite you to visit our Global Content Library on YouTube to view the full session if you're interested.

My guests for this episode are Richard Kisley, Chief Engineer IBM HSM, for IBM Corporation; Jillian Benedick, Cryptographer, Atalla, of Utimaco; Joachim Vance, Chief Security Architect, of Verifone; and finally, Steven Bowles, Regional Security Officer - North America, for Ingenico.

Well, it is hard to believe that we are already in February, but as we kick off 2026, we want to take a moment to also acknowledge all that the Council accomplished in 2025, including the recent release of the Council’s first-ever Annual Report. Joining me today to talk about this report and what we can expect in the year ahead is PCI SSC's Executive Director, Gina Gobeyn.