PCI Requirement 11

The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) maintains, evolves, and promotes Payment Card Industry standards for the safety of cardholder data across the globe. The PCI SSC provides technical and operational requirements for organizations accepting or processing payment transactions. The guidance also applies to software developers and manufacturers of applications and devices used in those transactions.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) helps entities understand and implement standards for security policies, technologies and ongoing processes that protect their payment systems from breaches and theft of cardholder data. The standards have historically been revised on a 2-3 year cycle, but the PCI SSC is transitioning to a posture of revising the PCI DSS as required based on changes to the current threat landscape. The current standard revision is PCI DSS Version 4.x. Any organization that handles payment card information must comply with the PCI DSS and must demonstrate compliance annually. Tenable Security Center is able to help organizations monitor ongoing PCI DSS compliance.

The PCI Requirement 11 ARC analyzes policy statements related to the eleventh PCI DSS requirement. This requirement mandates that security systems and processes should be tested regularly. The requirement seeks to establish procedures to continuously monitor and test security controls as the environment changes. Vulnerabilities are discovered continually and new ones are introduced by changes to systems and software. Monitoring system components, processes, and custom software can help to ensure ongoing security and PCI compliance. Security teams can use this ARC to identify and monitor controls related to vulnerability identification and remediation in order to meet requirement 11 of PCI DSS.

Organizations can configure repositories or asset lists in order to tailor the focus of the ARC. When the dashboard is added from the Tenable.sc Feed, the appropriate assets, IP addresses, or repositories can be specified. Assigning one of the options to the dashboard will update all filters in the components. By creating static or combination asset lists that include all systems in the Cardholder Data Environment (CDE), each component can be filtered to display results directly related to ongoing PCI security. Using an asset list filter will also allow traffic into and out of the CDE to be monitored. In order to accurately measure an organization’s PCI security posture, asset lists need to be applied as filters to provide results focused on the CDE.

This ARC is available in the Tenable Security Center Feed, a comprehensive collection of dashboards, reports, Assurance Report Cards, and assets. The ARC can be easily located in the Tenable Security Center Feed under the category Compliance. The ARC requirements are:

• Tenable Security Center
• Nessus 
• NNM 

Tenable's Tenable Security Center provides extensive network monitoring by leveraging a unique combination of detection, reporting, and pattern recognition utilizing industry recognized algorithms and models. Tenable Security Center is continuously updated to detect advanced threats and vulnerabilities. Tenable constantly analyzes information from our unique sensors, delivering continuous visibility and critical context and enabling decisive action that transforms the security program from reactive to proactive. Event normalization and correlation allows deeper visibility into the network. Continuous vulnerability analysis enables security teams to more effectively tailor remediation efforts. Monitoring the network to ensure that all systems are secured against vulnerabilities is essential to ongoing security efforts. Tenable’s extensive network monitoring capabilities can verify that systems are successfully scanned regularly and secured against vulnerabilities, enabling ongoing improvements to an organization’s security posture.

This ARC includes the following policy statements:

All actively and passively detected systems have been scanned in the last 90 days (11.3.1.2): This policy statement displays the ratio of detected systems that have been scanned in the last 90 days to total systems. If the policy statement requirement is met, the result is displayed in green; otherwise, the result is displayed in red. Systems on the network are detected both passively by NNM and actively by Nessus. All systems should be actively scanned by Nessus to ensure that all systems are properly identified and evaluated.

No systems have exploitable vulnerabilities (11.4.4): This policy statement displays the ratio of systems that have exploitable vulnerabilities to total systems. If the policy statement requirement is met, the result is displayed in green; otherwise, the result is displayed in red. An exploitable vulnerability is one for which malware already exists that can take advantage of the vulnerability in order to gain control of a system. Reducing the number of exploitable vulnerabilities can greatly help to reduce the risk to the network. Any exploitable vulnerabilities should be remediated immediately.

No systems have critical vulnerabilities (11.3.1.1): This policy statement displays the ratio of systems with critical vulnerabilities to total systems. If the policy statement requirement is met, the result is displayed in green; otherwise, the result is displayed in red. A critical vulnerability is considered the most severe and therefore most likely to be prone to compromise. Reducing the number of critical vulnerabilities can greatly help to reduce the risk to the network. Critical vulnerabilities should be remediated efficiently.

No systems have high vulnerabilities (11.3.1.1): This policy statement displays the ratio of systems with high vulnerabilities to total systems. If the policy statement requirement is met, the result is displayed in green; otherwise, the result is displayed in red. A high vulnerability is considered very severe and therefore more likely to be prone to compromise. Reducing the number of high vulnerabilities can greatly help to reduce the risk to the network. High vulnerabilities should be remediated quickly.

No systems have detected intrusion activity (11.5.1.1): This policy statement displays the ratio of systems on which intrusion activity has been detected to total systems. If the policy statement requirement is met, the result is displayed in green; otherwise, the result is displayed in red. Intrusion events include password guessing, IDS events, and network sweeps, among other things. Intrusion events could indicate ongoing attacks or hosts that have been compromised.

No new wireless access points have been detected in the past week (11.2.1): This policy statement displays the ratio of new wireless access points detected in the past week to all wireless devices. If the policy statement requirement is met, the result is displayed in green; otherwise, the result is displayed in red. The presence of new wireless access points should be documented and expected. Unexpected wireless access points should be investigated and either removed from the network or monitored.