What is the purpose of having PCI Compliance Software?

What is the purpose of having PCI Compliance Software?

Before discussing about the software it is important to define PCI (Payment Card Industry). A set of rules which are meant to ensure that a particular organization belonging to the card payment industry is functioning under a certain level of security is called the PCI data security or PCI DSS. The document that measures the extent to which an organization complies with the PCI DSS is provided by the PCI Security Standards Council is often aided by the PCI Compliance Software.

This software not only implements the legal PCI compliance requirements but also carries out pci compliance audit. The software is in the form of security software tools whose main purpose is to be concerned with the security information systems rather than being dedicated to PCI completely. This software fulfills other requirements also.

There are a number of software tools that can help an organization to become PCI compliant. They may either respond to a direct requirement or provide assistance in the enforcement of certain rules. They may be firewalls, anti-virus programs, access control, auditing tools, management concerning passwords and other possible ways to maintain minimum security.

How should be an ideal PCI Compliance Software?

A particular Data security product, that is, a PCI Compliance Software should help in achieving PCI DSS Compliance on systems like IBM I (i/OS), IBM Mainframe (z/OS), Windows, SQL Server, AIX and Linux. The basic features are as follows:

• Capable of onsite assessment.
• Should be able to carry out penetration testing.
• Should carry out vulnerability scanning and remediation prioritization.
• Capable of log monitoring and retention.
• Should provide intrusion prevention solutions.
• Should provide web application reviews.

The compliance software may be equipped to carry out internal or external scans. The various PCI Compliance Services offer help so that an organization complies with the different versions of PCI DSS for example versions 1.1 and 1.2. The services effectively controls that are crucial for the protection of the information about the cardholder which may be revealed during any kind of transaction.

Why are PCI Compliance Solutions required?

PCI Compliance Solutions help you to evaluate how much ready you are to carry out PCI assessments and find remedies for certain things. They further help to build strong controls so that you can maintain a constant PCI Compliance environment. The following are the PCI requirements for which solutions are needed:

• Built and maintain a secure network for which you should install and maintain firewall configurations and should not use vendor-supplied defaults as passwords for your system and thus security threats can be overcome.
• Card holder data needs to be protected. This can be done if you encrypt transmission of cardholder information across public networks.
• A regularly updated anti-virus system should be used to maintain a vulnerability management program.
• Implement strong access control measures.
• Monitor and test networks.
• Maintain a policy that gives detailed security information.

All the above-mentioned points make it very important to have PCI Compliance software.