Guide to passing PCI's five toughest requirements

This learning guide will review a few of the more challenging PCI DSS requirements and provide some tips that enterprises can use to achieve PCI DSS compliance.

PCI DSS: Where are organizations struggling?
All of the PCI DSS requirements seem to be fairly well defined, unlike those of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. SOX does not provide any specific direction on how to secure information assets and has been open to varying interpretations by companies and compliance audit firms. Nevertheless, organizations still find it difficult to become PCI DSS compliant. In an interesting study conducted by VeriSign Inc., researchers found that organizations were most likely to be noncompliant with PCI Requirement 3. Seventy-nine percent of the failed assessments did not meet the requirement...

Requirement 3: Protect stored data 79%
Requirement 11: Regularly test security systems and processes 74%
Requirement 8: Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access 71%
Requirement 10: Track/monitor network resources and cardholder data 71%
Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect data 66%

The Slaughterhouse-Five: Why are these problem areas?
Regardless of the fact that PCI DSS is definitely comprehensive, the list of requirements allows for 12 potential points of failure; the inability to pass any one means an organization won't be compliant. Additionally, even with the PCI DSS providing specific requirements, it can be interpreted differently by different types of organizations. Let's review the aforementioned PCI requirement failures, analyze why these might cause trouble for some organizations and discuss what measures can be taken to resolve the dilemma.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Craig Norris, CISSP, CISA, G7799, MCSE, Security+, CAPM, TICSA, is a Regional Engagement Manager at an IT consulting firm in Dallas. He has been involved with information technology and security for over 12 years. He can be contacted via canvip@yahoo.com.

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