Simpler PCI DSS Compliance with a Data Security Platform

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of comprehensive security regulations and standards designed to protect sensitive credit card data. The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) is a consortium of major credit card companies, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and JCB. PCI regulations apply to any organization that processes, stores, or transmits payment card data. 

The primary objectives of PCI DSS are to secure cardholder data, reduce the risk of data security breaches, and enhance overall payment card system security. Compliance with PCI DSS is designed to protect sensitive financial data and maintain customer and stakeholder trust. However, it is important to note that compliance is not the responsibility of the independent PCI SSC. Instead, individual payment brands and acquirers are responsible for enforcing compliance. As of March 31, 2024, all assessments must now be conducted against PCI DSS v4.0, the latest version. 

The twelve PCI data security requirements are organized into six goals. While the core goals remain, version 4.0 introduces significant updates, including some requirements that become mandatory in 2025.

Build and maintain a secure network and system:

1. Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data.
2. Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters.

Protect cardholder data:

3. Protect stored cardholder data.
4. Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks.

Maintain a vulnerability management program:

5. Protect all systems against malware and update antivirus software or programs regularly.
6. Develop and maintain secure systems and applications.

Implement strong access control measures:

7. Restrict access to cardholder data by the business on a need-to-know basis.
8. Identify and authenticate access to system components, including expanded multi-factor authentication (MFA) requirements in v4.0. 9. Restrict physical access to cardholder data.

Regularly monitor and test networks:

10. Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data.
11. Regularly test security systems and processes, with a new focus on protecting public-facing web pages from client-side attacks.

Maintain an information security policy: 

12. Maintain a policy that addresses information security for all personnel.

PCI DSS v4.0 is a specialized framework within the larger context of data security, with its principles aligning with best practices. A key change is the introduction of a “customized approach,” which provides organizations with greater flexibility to meet the standard’s security objectives. The standard also places new emphasis on protecting client-side assets to prevent web-based attacks.

Data Protection: The primary concern is safeguarding sensitive payment card data, including credit card numbers, expiration dates, and cardholder names. 

Access Control: Access controls limit who can access payment card data, ensuring that only authorized personnel can view or handle sensitive data.

Data Encryption: Requires the encryption of payment card data during transmission and storage. 

Regular Auditing & Monitoring: Continuous monitoring and auditing systems that handle payment card data. This real-time monitoring is also a best practice in broader data security, as it helps detect and respond to security threats and breaches promptly.

Security Policy and Procedures: Developing and maintaining comprehensive information security policies and procedures, including defining and implementing security policies to protect data assets.

Vendor Management: Secure management of third-party vendors with access to payment card data.

Incident Response: Specific requirements for incident response planning and execution. 

In essence, PCI DSS is a specialized framework within the larger context of data security. While it focuses primarily on payment card data, its principles and requirements align with best practices for safeguarding sensitive information, making it an essential part of an organization’s overall data security strategy. 

Satori’s data security platform makes it easier to meet PCI requirements. Integrate Satori seamlessly into your existing data infrastructure, and implement essential security measures to restrict access, monitor payment card data usage, and enforce security policies.

PCI DSS Requirement 3 mandates the protection of stored cardholder data. The first step in this process is knowing exactly where this data resides. Satori continuously discovers and classifies sensitive data, including Primary Account Numbers (PANs), expiration dates, and cardholder names, across your entire data environment, from data lakes and warehouses to production databases to LLMs and AI applications. Satori contains a list of out-of-the-box classifiers and supports your organization’s custom classification taxonomy. This visibility is crucial for ensuring that all cardholder data is properly secured, encrypted, and monitored, as required by the standard.

The Satori dashboard displays all information about your connected data stores, including their connection status, data classifications, and risk scores.

Satori’s data inventory gives you a full catalog of your sensitive data and classifications.

PCI DSS Requirement 7 restricts access to cardholder data on a business “need-to-know” basis. Satori provides centralized, granular data access control that works across diverse cloud data platforms. You can define policies based on user roles, attributes, and data sensitivity, ensuring that only authorized personnel can access the data they need, when they need it. This directly supports the principle of least privilege, a core tenet of PCI DSS.

Set access policies on users based on role, geographic location, or other attributes. Decide which data stores are involved and which masking policies are set.

PCI DSS Requirement 4 requires the encryption of cardholder data during transmission across open, public networks, and Requirement 3 mandates its protection while at rest. Satori offers dynamic data masking capabilities, allowing you to redact or tokenize sensitive cardholder data in real-time as it’s accessed. This ensures that even when data is being used for analytics or other business purposes, sensitive PANs are protected and do not expose the full card number, significantly reducing the risk of a data breach and easing compliance efforts. Read more about data masking in Satori.

Satori uses masking profiles to simplify the configuration of dynamic masking. Masking profiles define the set of transformations to apply to each data type.

PCI DSS Requirement 10 demands that organizations track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data. Satori provides centralized, automatically enriched audit logs of all data access activities across your data stores. This robust monitoring ensures complete visibility into who accessed what data and when. These detailed logs are invaluable for demonstrating compliance during audits and for conducting investigations in the event of a potential security incident.

Demonstrating compliance with PCI DSS can be a daunting task. Satori automates much of the reporting process, providing out-of-the-box reports and customizable dashboards that align with PCI DSS requirements. This simplifies the process of proving adherence to data governance, access controls, and data quality standards, allowing your teams to focus on innovation rather than manual compliance efforts.

The reports view contains predefined reports that allow you to easily identify data export attempts, malicious access to individual user records and new PII locations. You can also easily create custom reports.

Satori’s data security platform offers a comprehensive and efficient solution for companies that need to comply with PCI DSS. Satori seamlessly integrates into existing data stacks and automates your data security workflows, ensuring that payment card data remains secure with minimal overhead.

Learn more about how Satori can help you achieve and maintain PCI compliance by scheduling a demo with our team.