PCI DSS, sometimes also referred to as PCI Compliance, stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.
It is a defined set of standards/protocols that are maintained to protect the credit card owner's privacy during
all financial transactions. These protocols apply to all those concerns that accept credit card payments and those
that handle branded credit cards from the major card schemes. It applies to all those who store, process and transmit
cardholder data. PCI DSS is administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council,
headquartered in Wakefield, Massachusetts, USA. The PCI Standard is mandated by the card brands but administered by
the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council was originally
formed by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard, and Visa Inc. on 7 September 2006
to manage the ongoing evolution of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and to ensure a safe transaction and
online payment experience.
With the rise of online shopping and business, there has also been a sharp rise in online payments. PCI DSS focuses on the cardholder information restriction and why there is a very strong need to create safe passwords. In-depth practices such as encryption and the use of a firewall are also mentioned. PCI specifies that your databases should be encrypted well, and strong malware protection should be set up. There is also a need for a log collection and management system. PCI compliance also stresses Identity and Access Management, especially when it comes to configuring employee access. Lastly, PCI DSS makes it mandatory to log and monitor events on your setup and protect against continuous threat detection and monitoring. PCI DSS compliance is mandatory for companies handling credit card information.
If you are into the e-commerce business or are a seller online or deal with online payments and handle credit card information, you have to provide your customer base the comfort of online payment. And making it safe and secure is your responsibility. When the business does not comply with PCI standards, you are at risk for data breaches, other fines or card replacement costs, expensive forensic audits, and lastly, investigations into your business. These cause brand damage and more. The smart decision would be to become PCI compliant quickly. Failure to be PCI compliant can result in fines of up to $100,000 per month! There’s where Cloudanix comes for your help! Cloudanix automates audits that perform various checks consisting of different rules on a wide variety of recipes that we provide. For instance, our AWS recipe of S3 Audit contains rules like S3 Bucket Versioning Enabled, S3 Buckets Lifecycle Configuration, S3 HTTPS Only, and many more. These audit rules help you comply with the PCI DSS 10.5.3 and PCI DSS 2.3 clauses that stress prompt back up audit trail files to a centralized log server or media that is difficult to alter and encrypting non-console administrative access using strong cryptography, respectively. Our audit lets you know in the audit report if you are violating these rules and, effectively, these clauses of PCI DSS. We have many other recipes and rules that ensure you stay PCI DSS compliant and follow the best security practices while we are taking care of your security audits!
