What is PCI DSS?
Businesses that process card payments, need to do so securely and ensure that the risk of card fraud is minimised. As the worldwide Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, PCI DSS compliance demonstrates that your business meets the security requirements for holding, process and transmitting cardholder information.
PCI DSS protects businesses and their customers through tight controls surrounding the storage, transmission, and processing of cardholder data that are handled by organisations. If your business accepts, stores, or transmits card data, or outsources these functions, PCI DSS compliance validation is required by the card brands and in turn, your acquiring bank.
Achieving PCI DSS
It is important that PCI DSS isn’t applied to a whole organisation – it’s a very specific standard designed to protect only card data. Our approach is to understand and clearly define the scope, eradicate insecure business process, remove unnecessary card data and apply PCI DSS to the smallest common denominator possible. Our experts will advise how to protect or remove data to limit the overall scope and impact of PCI DSS, therefore reducing the overall complexity of compliance and reducing cost.
Our comprehensive PCI DSS assessment follows a 6-step process:
- Pre-Assessment Consultation: The first step in any PCI DSS assessment is determining the extent of an organisation’s cardholder data environment and how physical and logical data flows through the company. Accurate scoping is essential, to identify all systems which interact with cardholder data, along with any systems and third parties that connect to them or that may have an impact on security.
- PCI DSS Gap Analysis: Once we have carried out a thorough scope review, we will perform a PCI DSS gap analysis. This identifies areas of non-compliance and outlines areas requiring remediation, well before we carry out the formal assessment. The Gap analysis includes interviews with the organisation and their partners, a review of networks and servers and an inspection of current policies and procedures.
- Post-Onsite Summary Report: This report provides an overview on your compliance status and any remediation needs. PCI DSS Audit (Report on Compliance Assessment) All level 1 & 2 merchants and service providers need to be assessed against the Report on Compliance (RoC) to demonstrate compliance to third parties, business partners, clients and of course the card schemes.
- Remediation: We will work with you to fix areas of non-compliance and expedite the retesting process to ensure timely completion.
- Final PCI DSS Report and Submission: Following a gap analysis and any modifications, your company should be well prepared for the final audit. Our team usually anticipates a 95%+ score, at which point we pause the Audit until the final few controls are resolved. As a result, 100% of our clients pass their Report on Compliance Assessment. The final RoC report outlines compliance with PCI requirements and after client review, we will submit your compliance status to relevant stakeholders.
- Ongoing Support – PCI DSS comprises time-sensitive controls and must be regularly maintained. We help you stay in control of PCI DSS throughout the year, so you can maintain compliance with confidence.
Business Benefits
- Gain assurance that your information systems are protected from cybercriminals, internal threats and malware;
- Protect its reputation by avoiding the high volume of negative publicity associated with a card data breach;
- Demonstrate a real business commitment and awareness to the overall protection of personal information;
- Avoid the huge financial penalties associated with a data breach;
- Maximise market opportunities such as the continually growing payment application software market.
Why 2|SEC Consulting?
- We are a PCI DSS QSA company.
- We have been delivering PCI DSS compliance services since it was introduced in 2004.
- We can support clients through the entire range of payment card compliance services including PA-DSS, P2PE, penetration testing, training, and application security.
- We work to your deadlines – Our project management skills and tools will ensure we take the shortest path possible to a successful PCI DSS assessment.
- We deliver a detailed breakdown of all your results, along with recommendations in an easily interpretable format.
Would your business be able to avoid huge financial penalties associated with a breach?
Implementing PCI DSS gives your business assurance that your information systems are protected.
“2|SEC Consulting is a cyber security consultancy that supports you throughout an engagement. They are always available, extremely knowledgeable in their field and have been a great extension to our in-house security team.”
