Mike Versace, the National Director of Financial Services for Niteo Partners, a consulting and solutions firm and an NEC Company, was unanimously elected for a three year term as Chairman of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) technical committee on security and banking. Mike’s position was recently confirmed in London at the plenary meeting of the Committee by ISO delegate representatives and liaisons from the following countries: Canada, United Kingdom, United States, Germany, France, Korea and Japan. In addition, the European Commission on Banking Standards was represented.
“We are pleased that Mike has been confirmed to serve as the Chairman of ISO TC68 SC2 Security Management and General Banking Operations,” says Cynthia Fuller, Executive Director of the National Standards Accredited Standard Committee X9 – Financial Industry Standards, who proposed Mike and the TC68 SC2 Secretariat.
The ISO technical committee develops international technical standards for the financial services industry, including banking and securities. Originally formed in 1948, the group’s work continues to grow in importance as new technologies, financial products and service and security needs evolve with the modern global economy. Developing standards which incorporate the latest methods for handling and securing transactions and services is an increasing challenge facing the committee.This technical committee of ISO contributes to standardization efforts in security and risk management, the proper use of data security algorithms to safeguard electronic communications and protecting personal identification information used in online financial transactions.
Mike Verscae has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. He currently leads financial services initiatives for Niteo Partners. Prior to joining Niteo, he spent 9 years with the Federal Reserve Banks, where he was responsible for the security, design and deployment of the Fed’s national payments network. Also at the Fed, Versace founded and managed an international research program on future retail payment systems development. In this role, he launched several payment and security pilot schemes, including digitally signed XML payment objects, reloadable stored-value smart card payment and settlement systems, and point-of-sale check imaging, electronic clearing, and truncation systems.
“It is an honor to have the opportunity to serve ISO in this capacity,” says Versace. “ISO is a world wide, premier community for security standardization with a commitment to the process that embodies openness and transparency, consensus, and technical coherence. The specific information security challenges in the global financial services industry are more challenging than ever before, as the industry moves to migrate technical infrastructures from proprietary to more open technologies such as XML and web services. Assisting the industry in this migration by producing suitable security standards and frameworks while maintaining a linkage to all financial standards development activities is one of the primary objectives of our Committee.”
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies from 120 countries. The scope of ISO covers standardization in all fields except electrical and electronic engineering standards, which are the responsibility of IEC, the International Electrotechnical Commission. ISO work is decentralized; it is carried out by 185 technical committees and 611 subcommittees, which are organized and supported by technical secretariats in 34 countries. In the securities industry, the secretarial roole is fulfilled by SWIFT.
The people who develop international standards are an estimated 30,000 engineers, scientists, and administrators. They are nominated by ISO members to participate in the committee meetings and to represent the consolidated view and interest of industry, government, labor and individual consumers in the standards development process.The United States is the secretariat of ISO/TC68. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) of New York City delegated the responsibility to the Accredited Standards Committee X9, Inc., located in Annapolis, MD.
Niteo Partners is a consulting firm owned by NEC Corporation.