Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards

Protect Your Cardholder Data.

What is the PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire?
The PCI Self-Assessment Questionnaire is a list of questions used to assess your compliance with the requirements of the PCI DSS. The questionnaire includes questions about your policies, procedures, administrative controls, access controls and physical security measures as they pertain to those systems that store, process or transmit cardholder data.

What is a Vulnerability Scan?
A vulnerability scan is an automated scan that assesses your network from the Internet to see if you have any vulnerabilities or gaps that may allow an unauthorized or malicious user to gain access to your network and potentially compromise cardholder data.

Is there a deadline to be compliant?
Yes. However, these deadlines depend on your merchant level. Your merchant level is determined by the number and type of payment card transactions you process in a year.

What if my business does not go through this compliance procedure?
If you do not comply with the security requirements of the card associations, you put your organization at risk of payment card compromise. PinnaclePay Merchant Services and Chase Paymentech may also pass fines levied by the card associations for non-compliance on to you.

Can our internal staff validate our compliance?
The card associations require that you use an Approved Scanning Vendor to perform the quarterly vulnerability scans. However, your internal staff can complete the Annual PCI Self-Assessment questionnaire.

How long will this take?
The length of the process varies. Once non-compliance issues have been identified, the length of time it takes an organization to implement solutions to resolve the issues will affect the length of the PCI DSS compliance process. The length of time also varies depending on the resolution and the complexity of the environment.