If your organization is involved in the payment card industry, you know that PCI DSS compliance is essential. But achieving and maintaining compliance can be challenging, especially in cloud environments. Here are some key considerations and best practices for achieving cloud PCI DSS compliance.
What Is PCI DSS Compliance in Cloud Computing?
PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) was established in 2004 by Visa, Mastercard, American Express, JCB International, and Discover. PCI DSS is a global strategic framework that establishes and maintains security standards across a range of payment environments.
The standards protect customer card information in processing, storage, and transmission. In cloud environments, PCI DSS compliance can be particularly challenging. This is often due to shared responsibility models, dynamic infrastructures, and the need to ensure proper configurations across different cloud providers.
Best Practices for Achieving PCI Compliance in Cloud Environments
To become and remain PCI DSS compliant in the cloud, organizations should follow best practices, including:
Encrypt your data
It is the nature of cloud services that other businesses are using the same cloud infrastructure. This presents considerable risk. Encrypting your data mitigates that risk.
Your stored credit card numbers should already be protected with secure encryption wherever they are stored. It’s also advisable to implement key rotation, wherein encryption keys are retired and replaced at certain intervals to prevent unauthorized access.
Implement Access Controls and Monitoring Systems
To restrict access to cardholder data, organizations should implement role-based access control (RBAC). A monitoring system allows organizations to ensure compliance when a vendor or third-party account needs to access data.
It is important to regularly review your organization’s access privileges to ensure that access is removed from people who have changed roles, left the organization, or been mistakenly provided access. You can also monitor actual usage to assess just how much access each role truly requires.
Conduct Regular Security Assessments and Penetration Testing
To remain PCI DSS compliant, organizations must regularly assess and test their security systems and processes. One effective way to do this is penetration testing. Penetration testing for PCI DSS compliance should be based on the CDE environment and any structure affecting CDE protection. To run your pen tests, hire a trained security expert who is skilled at identifying system issues and vulnerabilities.
In addition to pen testing, organizations must conduct regular security assessments and segmentation tests. Segmentation tests determine whether a firewall misconfiguration will allow network access. Common misconfigurations include TCP connections or pinging allowed where they should not be. This can all be mitigated with simple reconfiguration to the firewall rules, but they must be found to be prevented.
Regular security assessments are also essential to maintaining PCI compliance. Such assessments should include infrastructure security settings, updates to antivirus and antimalware software, software updates and prompt patches, and employee education.
Organizations should also regularly review and update their security policies and procedures to ensure they are up to date, effective, and still make sense.
Ensure Compliance of All Cloud Providers and Third-Party Service Providers
Your organization relies on its cloud service providers (CSP) to oversee infrastructure and data access. And it is your organization’s responsibility to ensure its cloud providers and third-party service providers are compliant with PCI DSS requirements.
These requirements include obtaining an attestation of compliance (AOC) from your cloud service provider. Every year, you’ll need to obtain a statement that the CSP acknowledges its responsibility for PCI DSS compliance.
Implementing Security Automation and Monitoring Tools
Security automation and monitoring tools can detect and respond to security incidents in real time. A service like ComplianceCow provides real continuous monitoring to ensure that Kubernetes is proper, AWS and Azure configurations are correct, and code is secure. ComplianceCow also helps organizations comply with data security standards and public cloud requirements.
Implementing Security Automation and Monitoring Tools
Security automation and monitoring tools can detect and respond to security incidents in real time. A service like ComplianceCow provides real continuous monitoring to ensure that Kubernetes is proper, AWS and Azure configurations are correct, and code is secure. ComplianceCow also helps organizations comply with data security standards and public cloud requirements.
The Importance of Governance in Cloud Environments
To achieve and maintain PCI DSS compliance in cloud environments, organizations should prioritize governance. This means ensuring that necessary tasks such as firewall configurations and access control are in line with PCI DSS requirements. The environment is no longer your own and needs to be controlled and monitored to prevent issues.
Achieving Cloud PCI Compliance with ComplianceCow
ComplianceCow is a collaborative security compliance platform that helps organizations achieve and maintain PCI DSS compliance in the cloud.
In addition to real continuous monitoring, ComplianceCow allows organizations to create policy assessments and connect them to their cloud environment. Then, they can ask questions of the system and get back evidence. This can be done on a set schedule or continuously, and the evidence is collected programmatically, making compliance an easy afterthought.
ComplianceCow also helps organizations comply with PCI DSS requirements for cloud environments, including compliance with PCI DSS cloud computing guidelines.
By using ComplianceCow, organizations can ensure that their cloud environments are secure and compliant. They can also prioritize governance to limit the risk of negative things happening.
Achieving and maintaining PCI DSS compliance in the cloud is essential for organizations involved in the payment card industry. ComplianceCow can help make it easier and more effective. Compliance with PCI DSS requirements also helps organizations comply with information security and privacy concerns.