The PCI landscape is pretty scary out there. If you are a merchant or service provider that is looking for assistance, there is a long line of companies that are ready to help. What should you expect from your QSA? What should your assessment look like to get the best results? VeriSign reviewed our findings from our customers and wrote a white paper entitled, “Not All QSAs Are Created Equal: What You Should Know Before You Buy” that talk about what you should expect. This paper is a FREE download! Go check it out! Possibly Related Posts: PCI DSS 4.0 Released plus BOOK DETAILS! PCI Council Loses $600K in Revenue, PO Population on the Decline Why PCI DSS 4.0 Needs ...

About a month ago an audio guy showed up to my house and pinned a tiny microphone to my shirt for a podcast on PCI. It is a joint podcast with John Pescatore of Gartner. The theme is on managing PCI Compliance. Go check it out! Possibly Related Posts: PCI DSS 4.0 Released plus BOOK DETAILS! PCI Council Loses $600K in Revenue, PO Population on the Decline Why PCI DSS 4.0 Needs to be a Complete Rewrite Orfei Steps Down Should you be a PCI Participating Organization?

I was asked this question while sitting on a panel at RSA, and I think the answer depends on your perspective. I’ll answer this from a security industry perspective. If nothing else, you have to credit PCI with forcing the issue. Security among retail enterprises was generally limited to loss prevention and physical security until recently. Information security usually existed as a small and buried team within the Information Technology group, and did not have board level attention. If someone at the board was savvy enough to realize that security reporting to IT is an example of the fox guarding the hen house, then maybe they moved security into Internal Audit. Now we are seeing a massive amount of development ...

Your QSA may not be telling you the whole story. No, I’m not talking about sloppy assessment work. What I’m referring to is a clause that is supposed to be in your contract with your QSA. The DSS Validation Requirements for Qualified Security Assessors requires that QSAs put a notification in their contracts with their customers telling them that the ROC and supporting materials can be disclosed (Section A.6.3 in the doc linked above). Why does that language need to be in the contract? Because the QSA agrees to send the ROC to certain parties per the operating agreement! In a recent competitive bid situation, we were informed that two (of four) bidders DID NOT have such language in their ...