Viking Longtrip

Three days at the end of May saw Sean Bicknell and I head to the ninth annual VNUG (Viking NonStop User Group) conference held this year at Gällöfsta Manor, about half an hour north of Stockholm.
Day one was either an education day, or a golf tournament.  I was looking forward to a round of golf, but striking British Airways cabin staff had other ideas. Our rescheduled flight meant I’ll have to wait until next year to play my first golf in Sweden.  At least with an extra year to practice I’ll increase my chances of not coming last!

The real business began on the morning of day two.  Around 10 vendors set up their booths and a range of HP updates, vendor pitches and user presentations kicked off at 9.30am.  Our presentation was originally scheduled to be the final one of the event on day three, but a last-minute cancellation by one of the speakers meant we were moved to the afternoon of day two – no complaints there.

For XYPRO’s 20 minute slot we took a look at a few of the PCI-DSS requirements which can’t be met on a NonStop with native software.  This scenario applies to far more requirements than we had time to cover, but it was more than enough time to take a high-level look at three of the key PCI-DSS related tools we have to offer.

The first was XUA (XYGATE User Authentication) which provides logon controls via IP address, thus ticking the PDC-DSS 1.3.2 box:  Limit inbound Internet traffic to IP addresses within the DMZ.  XUA also provides far more functionality with the likes of LDAP-integrated Single Sign On, granular log-on control, time-related log-on restriction, full audit and more – not only providing extra uses, but also covering other PCI-DSS requirements including (but not limited to) 7.2, 8.1 and 8.5.13.

Following the theme of using one XYGATE solution to crack several different PCI-DSS nuts, were XSW (XYGATE Security Compliance Wizard) which is by far the best file-integrity/change-detection tool on the market and XMA (XYGATE Merged Audit) which chiefly consolidates and exports NonStop audit data and provides real-time alerts.  XSW and XMA apply to a long list of PCI requirements, so if you’re just starting a PCI project, be sure to take a look sooner rather than later.

PCI-DSS is a fairly hot topic in Europe right now and Sean and I thought his presentation was well received at the time.  Those thoughts were backed up a few days after the event, when the delegate feedback forms were returned, showing the XYPRO presentation to have scored the highest of the event – no mean feat when HP’s Mittal Parekh is in town – the man is so passionate he could talk about a paint drying process and I’d still be riveted!

It’s a VNUG tradition to have some sort of group activity on the evening of day two.  This year’s was kept under secret until they’d got everyone herded into a large empty conference room: line dancing!  I won’t deny that my heart sank when they first announced it, but I don’t mind admitting it was actually great fun – never thought I’d find myself saying that!  I’ll also admit that it’s far more difficult than it looks!

The event drew to a close at around 3.30pm on day three, giving us time to reflect on a well attended and very friendly VNUG event.  Our thanks to Tommy and the rest of the VNUG board for putting on another great conference.  With 2011 being the tenth anniversary, they’ve promised us an even more memorable event next year – we’re looking forward to it already.

www.vnug.biz
http://blog.xypro.com/

Dan Lewis
XYPRO European Marketing Manager
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