Pakistan’s financial and payments ecosystem is set to see a focused capacity building initiative as Risk Associates announces a specialized PCI DSS Workshop on Application Security and its Governance for banks and payment service providers. The two day workshop is scheduled for Feb 11 and 12, 2026, and will take place at the Mövenpick Hotel in Karachi. The program is designed to address the growing need for structured application security practices and compliance awareness as digital transactions continue to scale across the country’s banking and payments landscape.
The workshop will open with an in depth exploration of PCI DSS and its relevance for banks and PSPs, covering why the standard matters within regulated financial environments and how it supports protection of cardholder data. Participants will be guided through PCI DSS applicability across issuing acquiring and processing entities, followed by an overview of the twelve PCI DSS requirements. Sessions will also explain how to understand cardholder data environments and how to define and document PCI DSS scope accurately. Attention will be given to PCI DSS compliance fundamentals including compliance driven assessment systems and approaches to handling shared services and third party dependencies. The agenda also includes application scoping under PCI DSS, payment applications versus supporting applications, APIs middleware and reporting tools, and common scoping mistakes seen in real world audits. Governance documentation ownership and the role of PCI DSS scope controllers will be discussed to help organizations align security accountability with operational structures.
A significant portion of the first day will focus on application security concepts tools and testing practices. Topics include OWASP Top 10 vulnerabilities and mitigation strategies, how to write secure code, and best practices for building security into application design. The sessions will also examine secure application design principles and practical methods for embedding security across development lifecycles. Participants will be introduced to secure coding standards, static and dynamic testing approaches, and application security benchmarking. Automated tools for testing code repositories will also be discussed to highlight how security testing can be integrated into continuous development workflows without disrupting delivery timelines.
The second day will move deeper into secure software development lifecycle practices with an emphasis on process security requirements code review deployment and maintenance. Secure SDLC concepts will be explored alongside security requirements gathering phases and commonly used secure SDLC frameworks. The agenda includes secure code review methodology tools and checklists, as well as secure deployment and maintenance practices relevant to production environments. Test cases based on security validation and application security testing methodologies will be addressed to help teams strengthen resilience against common threats. By focusing on practical governance aligned with PCI DSS expectations, the workshop aims to support banks and PSPs in improving compliance readiness while strengthening overall application security posture within Pakistan’s evolving digital payments ecosystem.
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