Whether in the healthcare, food, retail, hospitality, or any other industry, any company whose line of business includes collecting payments must have systems in place to protect customer data. This is due to how sensitive payment data transfer is. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI-DSS, not only establishes the industry standards for cardholder data (CD) but also enforces them by imposing fines for violations.
Requirements for PCI-DSS Logging & Log Monitoring
What Does PCI-DSS Consist Of?
Early in the new millennium, the PCI-SSC, or Payment Card Industry-Security Standards Council, was established by the five major players in the world of payment card transactions: American Express, MasterCard, Discover Financial Services, Visa Inc., and JCB International. With two objectives in mind, the council developed information security requirements for payment processing.
- Defending clients against unauthorized identity theft, and assisting the payment processing industry in avoiding paying for avoidable data breaches.
The PCI-discussions SSCs led to the development of the PCI-DSS, which quickly became the industry's "best practices" for protecting customer payment data and information.
PCI-DSS Noncompliance Penalties
Even though PCI-DSS is only referred to as an "industry standard" as opposed to a law, observing it is necessary. As a merchant, non-compliance can seriously harm your business. For non-compliance, card companies and acquiring banks are subject to monthly fines ranging from $5,000 to $100,000. For SMEs, such fines could spell their demise.
So, is PCI-DSS Compliance Required?
It is, indeed! No matter the size of your business or the sector you operate in, PCI-DSS compliance is required if you accept, transmit, or store cardholder data.
What is PCI-DSS Requirement 10?
This requirement relates to the oversight of network and data access. It says to track and keep an eye on all cardholder information and network resource access.
In addition to logging mechanisms, the ability to track and monitor user actions is essential for the detection, mitigation, or complete avoidance of data breaches. System activity logs make it simpler to monitor, examine, and identify the point of a breach so that the appropriate authorities can be informed and take appropriate action.
Requirement 10 emphasizes that you constantly keep an eye on user access to and activity in your environment. It has 39 sub-parts that detail its requirements. You can offer a safe environment for cardholder data thanks to user access controls (CDE). Additionally, as a highly prescriptive set of standards, PCI-DSS lays out a detailed list of the actions, procedures, and records required to comply with its specifications.
What Records Are Required for Compliance with Requirement 10?
PCI-DSS has several built-in mechanisms to assist you in making sure you have fully complied with its requirements. The standard also contains a Guidance segment to help its users understand effective control review, in addition to listing sections, sub-sections, and portions of sections. The list of steps that can assist you in logging the information necessary to determine whether you are in compliance is provided below:
- Create a system or process that links user access to the system areas to which they have been granted access, and have faith in your ability to trace any suspicious activity back to its source.
- Make audit trails that show how the system administrator can be informed of any suspicious activity and take the appropriate action.
- To demonstrate that no unauthorized users have gained access to the systems, networks, and data, keep a record of each access entry to the CDE.
- Make sure to document all actions taken by "admin/root" accounts so that you can identify any potential abuse of power and track it back to the offending party.
- Maintain the integrity of audit log files by putting a system in place to spot any alterations, additions, or deletions.
- To track password guesses and brute-force hacking attacks, keep track of invalid or illegal login attempts.
- A record that makes it possible to track any tampering with authentication procedures intended to get around security measures.
- Note any interruptions or restarts to the audit logging procedures on your system.
- Maintain documentation to show that system-level objects, such as databases or stored procedures, weren't added to or removed by unauthorized user accounts.
- To keep track of user IDs, event types, timestamps, success/failure indicators, event origination, affected data, affected system components, and resource identity/name, an event log should be created.
- To keep track of the precise event sequences for forensics teams, synchronize clocks across system components.
- To guarantee data security and integrity, use the "principle of least privilege" when accessing audit logs.
- Backup logs to a centralized server or other secure storage.
- Write logs directly to a secure internal system, or offload/copy from external sources.
- Include mechanisms for monitoring file integrity and detecting changes to the audit log to help you identify any date violations.
- Review logs frequently, either manually or with the aid of tools for harvesting, parsing, and alerting logs.
- Every day, check security controls for alerts on the logs of vital system components, such as any suspicious activity.
- All system components should undergo routine reviews to look for any potential problems or unauthorized access attempts to sensitive systems through less sensitive systems.
- Keep track of any investigations into anomalies or exceptions.
- Keep all records on hand for at least a year.
- Ensure that staff members are aware of security procedures and monitoring.
Extra Requirements for Service Providers
- Establish formal processes to identify and notify users of critical security control failures, such as firewall rules being removed or going offline.
- Keep records of the response to security lapses, including the steps taken and those accountable.
Protecting Your Valuable Assets Starts With TevoraYour intellectual property is one of your most valuable assets.
Another benefit of this is that it increases the trust of your customers, since they too, will feel much more secure entrusting their personal data to you.PA DSS ComplianceAre you a software developer who develops payment systems?
The systems that are compliant ensure that as soon as the credit card is read, the content is hashed or otherwise encrypted.HIPAA ComplianceHealth organizations of any kind tend to be very aware of the importance of HIPAA compliance.
It’s a broad classification that touches upon the areas of privacy, confidentiality, cyber security etc.CSA Star ComplianceAs a cloud service provider, there are certain kinds of standards that apply to your line of business as well.
In order to attain the certification, both privacy and security should be covered.SOC ComplianceSOC compliance roughly falls within 2 different classifications.
While SOC1 builds its main focus around your financial reporting, SOC2 examines how well you store customer data.FISMA ComplianceAnother important standard for protecting data and establishing a security standard.
