Are you ready for PCI compliance?

Benj Hosack, director of Foregenix, a digital forensics and security company that works with businesses in the payment card industry and has experience of carrying out PCI-DSS assessments recommends that those businesses that have not yet done anything about it to follow this proven and well established six stage process to compliance:

1)Immediately commence work on understanding the PCI standard and obtaining assistance from industry experts. Ideally they should partner with an experienced Qualified Security Assessor to get specific advice on what to do to achieve PCI DSS Compliance.

2)Identify the scope of PCI DSS within their environment by identifying the location and flows of cardholder data. Ideally utilise an automated tool to save significant time.

3)Reduce this scope by eliminating systems and networks from being involved in the flow of cardholder data. This will drastically reduce the work required and thus the cost of obtaining compliance.

4)Perform a gap analysis on their in-scope environment against security posture (and on the PCI DSS Compliance). Armed with that information they can then assess the quickest and most cost effective way to address the problem areas/Gaps in their PCI DSS Compliance.

5)Remediate against the identified gaps and in tandem work towards building a compliant Report on Compliance (ROC).

6)Perform final validation to produce a compliant Report on Compliance and have this accepted by their acquirer.