Meeting the PCI Vulnerability Scanning Requirement

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an international data security standard developed by the PCI security standards council (PCI SSC). It is made up of a set of compliance regulations that explain what businesses must do to ensure cardholder data is secure in their web applications. They are codified in 12 requirements that businesses are legally obliged to adhere to in order to maintain PCI DSS compliant websites.

The Payment Card Industry developed the PCI compliance regulations to help businesses build a more robust information security and vulnerability management programs so they can protect cardholder data that they process, including credit card numbers of their customers.

Even though adhering to PCI DSS requirements could prove a difficult task for many, it is not. The Netsparker web application security solution conveniently enables you to automate most of the process and generate approved PCI compliance reports, so you do not have to depend so much on a PCI Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV) and Qualified Security Assessor (QSA).

By launching PCI compliance vulnerability scans with the Netsparker security tool, you can easily check if your public facing web applications meet the PCI DSS requirements imposed by the security standards council.

Protecting Cardholder Data with PCI Compliance Validity Scans

Vulnerability scanning (aka vulnerability assessment) and web penetration tests with an automated web vulnerability scanner of internet-facing web applications and web APIs is a PCI DSS requirement. Though you do not need third-party service providers or approved scanning vendors (ASV) or a to scan your web applications and system components. You will only need them to approve your network vulnerability scans.

You can conduct the PCI scanning (part of the self-assessment) with the Netsparker web application security scanner, because it meets the scanning requirements set by the PCI SSC. During the scan you will automatically identify:

• Insecure transmission of data on your web applications
• Security vulnerabilities such as SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting (XSS)
• Disclosure of sensitive data such as cardholder data, credit card numbers, source code and internal IP addresses.
• Identify and scan any third-party and off-the-shelf components such as WordPress, Joomla! or JavaScript libraries
• Authentication and access issues on your web applications
• Security flaws in your web server and other system components (web server security software)
• Required off-the-shelf product upgrades
• Other potential external vulnerabilities that make your web application susceptible to malicious hack attacks

You can generate a PCI DSS compliance report once the vulnerability scanning is finished. The PCI DSS, HIPAA compliance scan, and other compliance reports include all the information you and your developers need to know about the identified vulnerabilities including a highlight of their impact and practical remedial information. These reports also allow you to see what you have to do to ensure the scanned web target is compliant with the PCI DSS regulations.

The Need to Automate PCI Compliance Scanning

Netsparker uses the unique and pioneering Proof-Based Scanning™ technology. It can automatically verify identified vulnerabilities in a safe and read-only way, providing proof that they are not false positives. Therefore, unlike other vulnerability scanning solutions, Netsparker does not report false positives. This means your team does not have to:

• Spend days manually verifying the vulnerability scan results
• Be experienced and technical in order to manually verify the findings

Our automation allows you to assign the PCI DSS requirement of vulnerability scanning to less qualified personnel. So you do not have interrupt developers or pay expensive third party security professionals and service providers.

Netsparker's web application security scanner has out of the box support for bug tracking systems, vulnerability management systems and continuous integration systems such as Github, JIRA, Jenkins and TeamCity. By integrating automated vulnerability assessments in your secure SDLC and DevOps environments:

• Vulnerabilities are identified during the early stages of development
• Web vulnerability scans can be triggered automatically on code commits
• Identified issues can be automatically posted on your tracking systems
• The solution automatically checks developers’ fixes

Ensure Your Web Applications are PCI DSS Compliant

PCI DSS, and other compliance regulations such as HIPAA, are good at helping businesses get started with web application security and protecting cardholder data, though they only cover the minimum required. A malicious hacker only needs to find and exploit one security flaw, while businesses need to find and fix all of them.

This is why it is important for businesses to develop their own data security standard (and also information security policies) and do at least quarterly scans, or whenever they apply a significant change or add a new system component on their web applications. Netsparker enables businesses to:

• Scan any type of web application, web service and web API
• Identify vulnerabilities such as SQL Injection, XSS and others
• Identify coding mistakes that lead to security flaws
• Identify the most complex of vulnerabilities such as SSRF and second order vulnerabilities
• Identify security misconfigurations in their web servers and system components that could lead to cardholder data breach
• Generate any type of technical and executive and compliance reports for HIPAA and OWASP Top 10
• Generate an approved PCI DSS compliance report

Meet the PCI requirements and other security standards - scan your web applications with Netsparker and confirm your web applications are PCI DSS compliant.

Netsparker is available as an on-premises, hosted (online scanning service) and self hosted solution. Apply for a trial now and start scanning your web applications with the Netsparker web application security scanner.