How to get started with PCI DSS

Runecast Academy Series 2 – Part 8. How to get started with PCI DSS

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a set of requirements intended to ensure that all companies that process, store, or transmit credit card information operate in a secure environment. PCI DSS was drafted to address the growing threat of data breaches among payment cards. Founded and mandated by major card companies such as Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American express and JCB, it aims to strengthen controls around cardholder data and reduce credit card fraud.

PCI-DSS compliance is important to any business entity that is involved in accepting, processing, and storing payment card information. Since almost every business accepts credit or debit cards as a form of payment, PCI compliance has a real appeal for data security. A security audit based on the PCI DSS standard reduces the risk of credit and debit card data loss. The whole purpose of PCI DSS is to protect card data from hackers and thieves. It is also packed full of best practices for detecting, preventing, and remediating data breaches. By following this standard, you can keep your data secure, avoiding costly data breaches and protecting your employees and your customers.

PCI DSS non-compliance comes at the cost of fines that may end a business owner’s ability to conduct e-commerce and accept payment cards and online payments in the future.

Challenges to PCI DSS compliance

It’s Time-Consuming

The main challenge of PCI-DSS compliance is the preparation that audits require time-wise, and the bad news is that they take place once or more per year. Thus, PCI-DSS compliance readiness can become very overwhelming for both CISOs and Security teams. In order to be PCI-DSS compliant, you have to analyze and configure all your systems with PCI-DSS security rules and recommendations and prepare an audit report.

Diverse Technologies in IT Systems

In today’s IT systems there is a diversity of technologies and most companies operate in Hybrid or Multi-Cloud IT environments. Each technology has its own different security best practices which should be applied to be compliant with PCI-DSS. 

Lack of IT resources

Having diverse technologies in IT systems means that you need to engage more people to prepare PCI-DSS audit reports. In the meantime, all the other projects or daily tasks in your IT departments will be waiting for more resources.  

Runecast Has the Solution for You

Real-time Security Analysis and Reports 

Whether you are short on IT resources, use different IT systems, or you are simply overwhelmed from preparing reports all the time Runecast has the solution for you. It scans your specific configuration and provides Best Practices, fit-gap analysis reports and security hardening checks in real-time. These automated scans remove manual work and ensure optimal operation of your environment. It is easy to filter and sort issues, compare historical configuration, and remediate with simple actions. Furthermore, it helps mitigate security vulnerabilities such as Spectre, Meltdown, L1TF and more.

As a result, Runecast does all the hard work for you in a short space of time and what’s more interesting is that it provides you with suggestions (vendor best practices) to improve your performance, security and availability. 

Runecast automates your vulnerability management and security standards compliance audits for AWS, Azure, Kubernetes and VMware, as well as for Windows and Linux OS. It proactively assists with Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Kubernetes Security Posture Management (KSPM), and Governance, Risk Management and Compliance (GRC). It provides continuous audits against other common security standards such as CIS Benchmarks, NIST, HIPAA, DISA STIG, BSI IT-Grundschutz, ISO 27001, GDPR, Cyber Essentials (UK), Essential 8 (Australia), and the CISA KEVs catalog.

Summary

Compliance with PCI DSS is a crucial step to all businesses organizations that deal with credit card data. Getting PCI DSS compliant is a big challenge for affected organizations but it doesn't have  to be anymore. With Runecast it will only take minutes. 

Runecast offers you a painless quick fix that will make your compliance journey smooth and easy. It doesn't differentiate among your problems, it just hands you the remedy for your pain. Runecast will automate your manual work and give you vendor-based recommendations (best practices) for your PCI DSS compliance implementation and not only. It will scan your environment and provide you with a view of your current compliance state and solutions and recommendations (best practices) to improve your performance, security, availability and compliance journey. Furthermore, it offers vulnerability management, remediation script, configuration drift management and more. It provides vulnerability management and security standards compliance audits for AWS, Azure, Kubernetes and VMware, as well as for Windows and Linux OS.