There are 12 PCI DSS requirements, categorized into 6 control objectives, that need to be met in order to achieve compliance. The compliance requirements may differ depending on the size of your organization and the volume of transactions you process. As a first step to achieve compliance, we will review your present-state network architecture to determine the scope of your PCI DSS compliance. We will recommend you to isolate cardholder data to a segmented network with access control limited to a certain set of users. This will curtail the scope of your PCI DSS compliance to the segmented network and help you reduce the costs for compliance implementation and maintenance. This approach also leads to more enhanced and granular security controls for the zoned network.

We will also conduct a detailed gap analysis to determine your current level of compliance and outline the steps needed to achieve full compliance with the standard. This includes a comprehensive assessment of your network and security infrastructure, data flow analysis, and configuration reviews of different system components. We will also conduct interviews with key staff members to determine if there are any edge cases that need to be taken into account.

Our compliance and security experts will then offer detailed guidance to bring your systems to comply with the PCI DSS requirements. This includes installing and maintaining properly configured firewalls; ensuring the cardholder data at rest and in transit is made unintelligible by using encryption; implementing a robust vulnerability management program that covers measures to harden the IT environment against malware attacks. We will also help you implement strong access control measures so that exposure to cardholder data is limited on a need-to-know basis by users who have been authenticated. Our team will work with you to set up a system that tracks and monitors access to network resources and cardholder data. We will also carry out vulnerability assessments and pen testing periodically or at any time there is a significant change to the system. Finally, we will help you maintain an information security policy that outlines the plans, standards, and procedures to protect your assets.

Our team will also help you set up an incident response team and implement a comprehensive training program for your employees. We will also review the security practices of your business partners and third-party vendors to ensure that the fidelity and security of your business is not compromised on account of suboptimal security controls on their systems.

Finally, we will work with you to document your state of compliance in a self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) and help you understand the different elements of the report on compliance (ROC), which is filled out by a PCI Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), who will then submit this report to the PCI Security Standards Council attesting that you are in compliance with the PCI DSS standard.