diff --git a/spiffworkflow-backend/Dockerfile b/spiffworkflow-backend/Dockerfile
index 0a226bac1..8af141449 100644
--- a/spiffworkflow-backend/Dockerfile
+++ b/spiffworkflow-backend/Dockerfile
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 # Base image to share ENV vars that activate VENV.
-FROM python:3.11.6-slim-bookworm AS base
+FROM python:3.12.1-slim-bookworm AS base
 
 ENV VIRTUAL_ENV=/app/venv
 RUN python3 -m venv $VIRTUAL_ENV
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ RUN useradd _gunicorn --no-create-home --user-group
 
 # default-libmysqlclient-dev for mysqlclient lib
 RUN apt-get update \
- && apt-get install -y -q gcc libssl-dev libpq-dev default-libmysqlclient-dev pkg-config
+ && apt-get install -y -q gcc libssl-dev libpq-dev default-libmysqlclient-dev pkg-config libffi-dev
 
 # poetry install takes a long time and can be cached if dependencies don't change,
 # so that's why we tolerate running it twice.
diff --git a/spiffworkflow-backend/poetry.lock b/spiffworkflow-backend/poetry.lock
index 1466a664c..6d5d4ad5f 100644
--- a/spiffworkflow-backend/poetry.lock
+++ b/spiffworkflow-backend/poetry.lock
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-# This file is automatically @generated by Poetry 1.7.1 and should not be changed by hand.
+# This file is automatically @generated by Poetry 1.6.1 and should not be changed by hand.
 
 [[package]]
 name = "alembic"
@@ -404,6 +404,17 @@ files = [
     {file = "cfgv-3.3.1.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:f5a830efb9ce7a445376bb66ec94c638a9787422f96264c98edc6bdeed8ab736"},
 ]
 
+[[package]]
+name = "chardet"
+version = "5.2.0"
+description = "Universal encoding detector for Python 3"
+optional = false
+python-versions = ">=3.7"
+files = [
+    {file = "chardet-5.2.0-py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:e1cf59446890a00105fe7b7912492ea04b6e6f06d4b742b2c788469e34c82970"},
+    {file = "chardet-5.2.0.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:1b3b6ff479a8c414bc3fa2c0852995695c4a026dcd6d0633b2dd092ca39c1cf7"},
+]
+
 [[package]]
 name = "charset-normalizer"
 version = "3.1.0"
@@ -1139,17 +1150,17 @@ test = ["objgraph", "psutil"]
 
 [[package]]
 name = "gunicorn"
-version = "20.1.0"
+version = "21.2.0"
 description = "WSGI HTTP Server for UNIX"
 optional = false
 python-versions = ">=3.5"
 files = [
-    {file = "gunicorn-20.1.0-py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:9dcc4547dbb1cb284accfb15ab5667a0e5d1881cc443e0677b4882a4067a807e"},
-    {file = "gunicorn-20.1.0.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:e0a968b5ba15f8a328fdfd7ab1fcb5af4470c28aaf7e55df02a99bc13138e6e8"},
+    {file = "gunicorn-21.2.0-py3-none-any.whl", hash = "sha256:3213aa5e8c24949e792bcacfc176fef362e7aac80b76c56f6b5122bf350722f0"},
+    {file = "gunicorn-21.2.0.tar.gz", hash = "sha256:88ec8bff1d634f98e61b9f65bc4bf3cd918a90806c6f5c48bc5603849ec81033"},
 ]
 
 [package.dependencies]
-setuptools = ">=3.0"
+packaging = "*"
 
 [package.extras]
 eventlet = ["eventlet (>=0.24.1)"]
@@ -3121,4 +3132,4 @@ tests-strict = ["pytest (==4.6.0)", "pytest (==4.6.0)", "pytest (==6.2.5)", "pyt
 [metadata]
 lock-version = "2.0"
 python-versions = ">=3.10,<3.13"
-content-hash = "60a0cb77d767fbe152708c7322d3c5ddf3c7c31e19d324938ddc62be2cf360b1"
+content-hash = "d778a028448e45773cd0f5b6aa4d4c4cb2f34b42b7f91dc2907d44fa9b9feb07"
diff --git a/spiffworkflow-backend/pyproject.toml b/spiffworkflow-backend/pyproject.toml
index 16f761236..980464ee1 100644
--- a/spiffworkflow-backend/pyproject.toml
+++ b/spiffworkflow-backend/pyproject.toml
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ connexion = {extras = [ "swagger-ui",], version = "^2"}
 lxml = "^4.9.1"
 marshmallow-enum = "^1.5.1"
 PyJWT = "^2.6.0"
-gunicorn = "^20.1.0"
+gunicorn = "^21.0.0"
 APScheduler = "*"
 Jinja2 = "^3.1.3"
 RestrictedPython = "^7.0"
@@ -80,6 +80,7 @@ flask-oauthlib = "^0.9.6"
 celery = {extras = ["redis"], version = "^5.3.5"}
 celery-stubs = "^0.1.3"
 jsonschema = "^4.20.0"
+chardet = "^5.2.0"
 
 [tool.poetry.scripts]
 spiffworkflow-backend = "spiffworkflow_backend.__main__:main"