Managing Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Compliance with Ease

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was developed to combat the growing menace of credit card fraud. The standard is mandated by leading credit cards institutions like Visa and MasterCard. PCI DSS Compliance and security standards are technical and operational requirements set by the PCI Security Standards Council to protect cardholder data. These standards apply to all organizations that store, process, or transmit cardholder data.

The PCI DSS standard comprises of 12 general requirements with the following goals:

Build and Maintain a Secure Network and Systems
Implement Strong Access Control Measures
Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program
Regularly Monitor and Test Networks
Maintain an Information Security Policy
Protect Cardholder Data

Why should you care about PCI DSS Compliance?

There can be severe repercussions for not complying with PCI DSS, including damaging your brand reputation, losing potential business, and paying fines ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 per month. Hence, it is critical to decode the PCI DSS compliance requirements and have all the necessary controls to manage and sustain compliance. This blog describes key challenges in implementing PCI DSS compliance and how businesses engaging in credit card payments can protect cardholder data while maintaining the highest levels of information security.

Key Challenges in Managing PCI DSS Compliance

While it is critical to sustain PCI DDS compliance, organizations often grapple with multiple challenges.

Identifying the right scope

PCI has many requirements, sub-requirements, and multiple levels based on the number of card transactions annually. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the requirements and a proper definition of the scope would be required. If not implemented, it would result in wasted time and effort.

Maintaining and updating policies

Requirement 12 of PCI DSS is to ensure that the organization’s compliance policies are well-defined, aligned, and up-to-date to help secure sensitive cardholder data. Policies must also be effectively communicated while tracking adherence to them.

Preparing for Compliance Audits

Gathering relevant data and demonstrating how each configuration item in the cardholder data environment (CDE) is compliant is often a manual process.

Thousands of hours of labor are required to collect information by hand. Therefore, it is critical for any organization subject to PCI to quickly pass its audit with as little manual work as necessary, so teams can better focus on achieving business objectives.

Streamlining PCI DSS Compliance with Progress Chef

Adopting a continuous compliance approach allows organizations to quickly answer audit questions at any time, not just quarterly or yearly. Progress Chef Compliance can help implement continuous security assessments, allowing your organization to satisfy audit requirements while making the process as painless as possible. 

With Chef Compliance, your teams can enter an audit cycle knowing their exact compliance posture rather than being surprised by auditors who find weak points in your environment. Compliance issues or policy breaches can be rapidly identified, and teams can react quickly to triage and remediate problems even before the auditors show up.

Join Our Webinar to Learn More

We will discuss on how Chef can help you comply with PCI DSS in a webinar on March 7th by Shua Matin, Senior Manager, Product Marketing and Lokesh Kannaiyan, Senior Product Manager at Chef. The panel will also address all your questions during the Q&A session.

If the content of this blog is of interest to you, you should register for the webinar to see how Chef can help you achieve your PCI DSS Compliance initiative.