A PCI DSS audit is a point-in-time assessment of your payment network by a qualified security assessor (QSA). This audit tests your organization’s security controls to see if they are up to the standard set by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.
The PCI DSS audit is designed to protect credit card data from unauthorised use and exposure. For this reason, all merchants and their service providers must comply with it.
Risk Assessment
A PCI DSS audit is a thorough assessment of your business’s security policies and practices. It identifies threats and vulnerabilities that may impact the security of cardholder data.
The assessment also includes a risk rating for each vulnerability and threat. This will allow your team to prioritise which risks to take on first.
Once a potential risk is identified, you need to consider its likelihood and its impact on your cardholder data environment. This will help you determine the severity of the issue.
Security Policy
PCI DSS requirements establish a common set of best practices for merchants and service providers to protect cardholder data. This includes creating a security policy for all staff and ensuring that the policies are updated regularly.
Requirement 8 is a fundamental requirement that ensures that only authorised users have access to cardholder data. This is done by assigning a unique ID to each user and keeping audit logs and audit trails for each login event.
Security Incident Response Plan
CSIRPs are a great tool for coordinating incident response across your organization. They can also be used to help you define risk criteria, crisis communication strategies, and roles and responsibilities for everyone involved in incident response.
Once your CSIRP is in place, you should regularly update it as new employees are added to the team and as the company grows or changes. Keeping it up-to-date will make it easier to respond to security incidents and comply with PCI DSS audits.
Security Testing
Security testing is an important part of the PCI DSS audit process. It focuses on identifying potential vulnerabilities in the software and IT infrastructure. It also tests a company’s policies and procedures, evaluating their compliance with regulatory standards.
Vulnerability scanning is done through automated software to scan a system against known vulnerability signatures. It also includes a penetration test, which simulates a hacking attack on the network.
The tests help to identify security flaws in the application, allowing them to be resolved through code changes. It also identifies any configuration errors that may be preventing the system from working properly.
