PCI DSS is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard that includes a list of the preferred practices, and best measures for transmitting, processing, handling and storing payment card data. It was originally developed by the payment card companies such as Visa and MasterCard in response to the expanding number of cases of theft and misuse of payment card details.
Why PCI DSS should incorporate Penetration Test?
Similar to a genuine attack, penetration testing replicates the actions of a hacker or malicious user attempting to infiltrate your network. This process involves assessing your network environment, identifying weaknesses, and attempting to exploit them.
To address issues related to payment card violations more comprehensively, PCI DSS version 3.2 introduced various changes, with a focus on penetration testing, particularly for Service Providers. Conducting penetration tests to validate compliance with PCI security standards aids in proactively identifying vulnerabilities before they can be exploited by cybercriminals.
The speed of the pen test is contingent on factors such as the size of your network, the number of assigned penetration testers, and the complexity of your network. Essentially, the larger and more intricate the environment, the longer it takes to complete a thorough test. The test results encompass comprehensive reports, detailing attack descriptions, testing tactics, and providing recommendations to mitigate these potential vulnerabilities.
Benefits of penetration testing
• Protects the image of the company and customer loyalty- it helps the organization to avoid data incidents that might destroy the reputation of the company.
• It meets monitoring necessities and avoids penalties- it helps the company in addressing the overall auditing facets of procedures and exactly report testing necessities recognized in PCI DSS commands. The report generated by penetration testing can support the company in avoiding substantial penalties.
• Helps in detecting and arranging security threats- it estimates the ability of the company to defend its users, network, application and all external and internal attempts of attacks. The result of the test confirms the threat rooted by particular security vulnerability allowing IT experts to organize remediation efforts.
• It provides a deep and clear vulnerability- it offers complete information on vulnerable security threats. This helps the company to identify which threats are serious, which are not as much as worthy and which are wrong positive. The organization can clearly organize remediation, carry out the necessary security patches and allocate security resources ably to ensure that they are easily reached wherever and whenever they are mostly required.
Vulnerability scanning is not enough
Vulnerability scanning is an automated test that identifies and reports both internal and external vulnerability. Internal vulnerability scanning is executed to search for vulnerability on internal hosts that could be exploited in a pivot attack within your network. For external vulnerability scan, it is the scanning that is done outside of your network in order to recognize known weaknesses in network structure. Vulnerability scan is not enough. PCI DSS also requires both external and internal penetration testing.
There are a lot of penetration testing companies that can aid organisations with identify weaknesses within their IT infrastructure. In conclusion, any company that would like to improve information security and improve resistance to cyber attacks, should consider having a penetration test performed.
Sources: https://www.aptive.co.uk/cybersecurity/what-is-pentesting/
(penetration testing definition)
Page last checked and updated: 3rd Feburary 2024
