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PCI DSS and PA-DSS version 3.0 published

By Retail Technology | Monday November 25 2013

PCI Council publishes updated payment card security standards to help organisations embrace best security practice in order to make it business-as-usual

The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) has today published version 3.0 of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and Payment Application Data Security Standard (PA DSS)

Available now on the PCI SSC website, version 3.0 becomes effective on 01 January 2014, although version 2.0 will remain active until 31 December 2014 to ensure adequate time for organisations to make the transition.
 
Changes are made to the standards every three years, based on feedback from the Council’s global constituents per the PCI DSS and PA-DSS development lifecycle and in response to market needs. Proposed changes for version 3.0 were shared publicly in August and participating organisations and assessors had the opportunity to discuss the draft standards at the 2013 Community Meetings prior to final publication.

Education, awareness and security

The Council, which administers the standards, said version 3.0 had been designed to help organisations make payment security part of their business-as-usual activities by introducing more flexibility, as well as an increased focus on education, awareness and security as a shared responsibility.
 
Overall, updates include specific recommendations for making PCI DSS part of everyday business processes and best practices for maintaining ongoing PCI DSS compliance; guidance from the Navigating PCI DSS Guide, which has now been built into the standard; and enhanced testing procedures to clarify the level of validation expected for each requirement. 

New requirements include:
 
PCI DSS 
  • Req. 5.1.2 - evaluate evolving malware threats for any systems not considered to be commonly affected
  • Req. 8.2.3 - combined minimum password complexity and strength requirements into one, and increased flexibility for alternatives
  • Req. 8.5.1 - for service providers with remote access to customer premises, use unique authentication credentials for each customer*
  • Req. 8.6 - where other authentication mechanisms are used (for example, physical or logical security tokens, smart cards, certificates, etc.) these must be linked to an individual account and ensure only the intended user can gain access
  • Req. 9.3 - control physical access to sensitive areas for onsite personnel, including a process to authorize access, and revoke access immediately upon termination
  • Req. 9.9 - protect devices that capture payment card data via direct physical interaction with the card from tampering and substitution*
  • Req. 11.3 and 11.3.4 - implement a methodology for penetration testing; if segmentation is used to isolate the cardholder data environment from other networks, perform penetration tests to verify that the segmentation methods are operational and effective*
  • Req. 11.5.1 - implement a process to respond to any alerts generated by the change-detection mechanism
  • Req. 12.8.5 - maintain information about which PCI DSS requirements are managed by each service provider, and which are managed by the entity
  • Req. 12.9 - for service providers, provide the written, agreement/acknowledgment to their customers as specified at requirement 12.8.2*

PA-DSS
  • Req. 5.1.5 – payment application developers to verify integrity of source code during the development process
  • Req. 5.1.6 – payment applications to be developed according to industry best practices for secure coding techniques
  • Req. 5.4 - payment application vendors to incorporate versioning methodology for each payment application
  • Req. 5.5 - payment application vendors to incorporate risk assessment techniques into their software development process
  • Req. 7.3 - application vendor to provide release notes for all application updates
  • Req. 10.2.2 - vendors with remote access to customer premises (for example, to provide support/maintenance services) use unique authentication credentials for each customer
  • Req. 14.1 – provide information security and PA-DSS training for vendor personnel with PA-DSS responsibility at least annually
 
[*Indicates future dated requirements that are best practices until 01 July 2015.]
 
Organisations can access the standards and detailed summary of changes from version 2.0 to version 3.0 at the PCI SSC website here. Supporting documentation including updated Self-Assessment Questionnaires (SAQ), Attestations of Compliance (AOC) and Reporting Templates will be available in early 2014 once version 3.0 is effective.

Security drives compliance 
 
“Over the course of several years now, the PCI Security Standards Council has done a laudable job at defining and evolving a cohesive set of standards, as well as at listening and adapting over time to the feedback from merchants, banks, payment processors, service providers, and technology providers,” said Derek Brink, vice president and research fellow for research firm Aberdeen Group. “The stakeholders in the payment card community seem to be working to put security and compliance in the right relationship – i.e., that compliance does not drive security; compliance is the result of foundational security practices.”
 
“PCI Standards continue to provide a strong framework for payment card security,” added Bob Russo, PCI SSC general manager. “The core principles at work when we first published PCI DSS are still relevant today. Version 3.0 builds on these to address the feedback we’ve heard from our community and to help organisations make payment security good business practice – every day, all year round.”

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