ISO 9001 Quality Management Principles

What Is ISO 9001?

ISO 9001 is the most well-known international standard for Quality Management Systems (QMS). It is published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and part of the broader ISO 9000 family.

At its core, a QMS is a structured set of documented processes designed to ensure consistent quality in the products or services you deliver. It helps you meet customer expectations, while staying compliant with any applicable industry regulations.

ISO 9001 specifically focuses on quality management system standards for enterprise-wide quality assurance. It promotes a consistent, process-driven approach to managing quality and driving continuous improvement—not just meeting specifications, but truly aligning with customer needs.

Unlike systems that focus purely on product outputs, ISO 9001 evaluates how well your processes support customer satisfaction. It encourages companies to take a step back, examine more than 20 core processes, and optimize how work flows across teams and departments.

Ultimately, ISO 9001 is about prevention. It’s designed to help you identify and avoid quality issues before they impact customers, employees, or business partners—and to build a culture where quality is everyone’s responsibility.

What Is The Current ISO 9001 Standard?

The current version is ISO 9001:2015 which was published in September 2015 and replaced the previous ISO 9001:2008 standard. 

Key updates in the 2015 version include:

• Greater focus on risk-based thinking and risk management.
• More emphasis on achieving desired outcomes that meet customer needs, not just following procedures.
• More flexibility regarding documented information requirements.
• Streamlining of the standard’s requirements to simplify implementation.
• Alignment with other newer management system standards like ISO 14001 (environmental management) and ISO 13485 (medical devices).

ISO 9000 vs. ISO 9001

It’s important to understand the distinction between these related standards:

• ISO 9000 refers to the entire family of standards related to quality management established by ISO/TC 176. This includes standards for fundamentals, vocabulary, training, quality systems, management review, documentation, etc.
• ISO 9001 is the specific standard within the ISO 9000 family focused on the requirements for a QMS. It is the only standard in the ISO 9000 family that organizations can get certified by an accredited body.

The Eight Quality Management Principles of ISO 9001

At the center of the ISO 9001 are eight key principles of quality management:

1. Customer Focus

The quality of your product isn’t just about how it looks or functions—it’s about how well it solves a customer’s problem or meets their expectations. To stay truly focused on quality, you need to understand what your customers actually want, what they care about, and what they expect from your product or service. That means listening to their feedback, tracking satisfaction, and making adjustments based on real needs, not just internal standards.

2. Leadership 

Organizations succeed when leaders establish and maintain a work environment that enables employees to become fully involved in achieving the organization’s unified quality goals. You should help the leaders at all levels establish a single purpose and direction, as well as create conditions to encourage employees to work toward the organization’s quality objectives. 

3. Engagement of People 

Employees who are engaged become more empowered, competent, dependable, and better able to help you achieve your top objective—better meeting your customers’ needs. Engaging your employees means you should respect them as individuals. Recognize them for their achievements, help them with their personal and professional development, and constantly communicate with them. The way for your company to succeed is to retain competent employees by engaging with them.

4. Process Approach 

An organization will operate more efficiently when leaders manage and control the business processes and link them together to form a single system. Adopting this process approach will help your company achieve more predictable and consistent results. It will also help people focus their efforts on key improvement processes.

5. System Approach to Management

The process approach is part of the system approach. That means you have to understand, analyze, and manage interrelated processes so you can develop a cohesive system to attain your organizational objectives. You’ll continue to be successful when you manage your business processes as one cohesive quality management system.

6. Continual Improvement 

It’s critical to maintain focus on improvement throughout your organization. Continual improvement is an ongoing effort to enhance your company’s products, services, and processes. It should be a key part of your quality management strategy. 

7. Factual Approach to Decision Making

During the decision-making process, staff should analyze and evaluate all available data and information using the appropriate tools and methods. However, all this data should be accurate, reliable, and secure because accurate facts and proper data analysis will allow you to make the best business decisions. 

8. Relationship Management

Successful companies establish relationships with relevant partners, including business associates, vendors, investors, and resellers, to ensure the continuity of the supply chain.

Understanding the basics of ISO 9001 and its focus on the customer will help you determine why—and whether—you want to implement the standard.

What Are the Requirements of ISO 9001?

To achieve and maintain an ISO 9001 certification, businesses must meet requirements based on the critical areas of the quality management system. These requirements are organized into seven key clauses.

1. Context of the Organization (Clause 4)

This clause specifies the goal and strategic direction of the company’s quality management system. It addresses:

• Identifying the internal and external factors that influence quality.
• Identifying stakeholders (employees, suppliers, etc.).
• Recognizing consumers’ preferences and needs.

2. Leadership (Clause 5)

ISO 9001 recognizes that a successful quality management system depends on top management’s commitment. This clause requires the management team to:

• Develop a quality management system
• Create quality guidelines and goals
• Communicate these guidelines and goals to personnel accountable for product/service quality
• Perform periodic evaluations

3. Planning (Clause 6)

A successful quality management system uses a risk-based approach and implements strategies to handle risks and opportunities. Organizations must:

• Record possible threats, noting their severity and likelihood of occurrence.
• Make plans to avoid or mitigate unfavorable consequences.
• Integrate strategies to improve desired outcomes.

4. Support (Clause 7)

This clause requires organizations to provide appropriate resources to execute an effective quality management system, including:

• Efficient working environments
• Strong infrastructure
• Effective human resources management

5. Operation (Clause 8)

The operation section defines the organization’s work to produce and supply products and services. Procedures should outline:

• The specifications and quality goals of goods or services.
• The procedure manuals, papers, and tools staff require.
• Monitoring, inspection, or testing required to verify quality.
• The guidelines governing the production and preservation of records.

6. Performance Evaluation (Clause 9)

This clause mandates the company to measure and analyze its operations, then document the results to:

• Show that it meets the standards of ISO 9001.
• Check if it is using all components of its quality management system.
• Encourage continuous improvement in quality management.

7. Improvement (Clause 10)

The standard’s final clause emphasizes continual improvement. Measures should be implemented to:

• Improve services and goods for the company’s benefit.
• Improve client satisfaction by better matching consumer demands.
• Identify situations when processes fail to meet their objectives and adjust them accordingly.

Common ISO 9001 Basic Requirements

Beyond the seven clauses, organizations must meet these common requirements to achieve ISO certification:

• Develop a quality policy and objectives approved by top management.
• Appoint management representatives responsible for the QMS.
• Maintain documented information related to processes, procedures, and activities.
• Design processes and procedures to meet product and service requirements.
• Ensure adequate resources, like staff training, to operate processes effectively.
• Conduct internal quality audits and management reviews.
• Address risks and opportunities through preventive action.
• Track and measure performance through metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs).
• Manage nonconformities and take corrective action when necessary.
• Continually improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the QMS.

Who Should Use ISO 9001?

Increasingly, customers are looking for a guarantee that the products they’re buying have gone through quality management best practices.

ISO 9001 can benefit organizations of any size or industry. It’s typically most relevant for organizations that:

• Want to demonstrate commitment to quality, customer satisfaction, and continual improvement.
• Seek consistency and efficiency through standardized processes across the supply chain.
• Require certification for bidding purposes or customer demands.
• Operate globally and need QMS alignment across various sites or countries.
• Want to integrate different management system standards for optimized performance.

The standard is commonly adopted by:

• Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses
• Manufacturing companies
• Healthcare organizations
• Service companies
• Data centers
• IT managed services providers
• Financial services companies
• Payment processors
• HR and payroll processors
• E-commerce platforms
• CRM platforms
• Customer service providers

Is ISO 9001 a Legal Requirement?

In most cases, ISO 9001 certification is voluntary and not a legal requirement. However, there are exceptions:

• In some cases, an industry regulator may mandate certification for participation.
• Some government tenders and contracts require suppliers to be ISO 9001 certified.
• Certification can help companies comply with general statutory and regulatory requirements regarding product quality and safety.

Benefits of ISO 9001 Certification

The benefits of implementing ISO 9001 and achieving certification include:

• Customer satisfaction: Meeting customer requirements and exceeding expectations increases customer loyalty.
• Organizational oversight: Better governance and management of systems and data.
• Improved vendor management: Enhanced ability to select and monitor service providers.
• Stronger risk management: More robust processes for identifying and mitigating risks.
• Regulatory alignment: Better positioning to meet other regulatory requirements.
• Competitive advantage: Differentiation in the marketplace.
• Enhanced customer trust: Proof of properly secured client data.
• Operational improvement: Insights for more efficient and secure operations.
• Stronger financial stability: Documentation, evaluation, and improvement of internal controls.
• Market share and new opportunities: Faster response to opportunities, expanded market share, and regulatory compliance.
• Engagement of people: Building a more competent and motivated workforce.

Should I Get ISO 9001 Certification?

While ISO 9001 certification is not legally required, and the auditing and certification process can be costly depending on your organization’s size and scope, many organizations choose to become certified because of the significant benefits.

Achieving an attestation of ISO compliance from a certification body accredited by ISO’s Committee on Conformity Assessment (CASCO) demonstrates that your enterprise is serious about quality assurance. This enhances your reputation and can give you a competitive edge over non-certified organizations.

Certification also assures that your QMS is functioning at its full potential, so processes run efficiently and effectively. Goods and services will meet customer requirements and statutory and regulatory requirements. Some clients specifically look for certification when shopping for services. If you are not certified, you could miss out on new business.

Steps For a Company to Get ISO 9001 Certified

Getting ISO 9001 certification requires careful planning and execution. Here are the typical steps.

1. Learn the standard: Obtain copies of the ISO 9001 standard and conduct training to understand the requirements.
2. Perform a gap analysis: Compare current practices against the ISO 9001 requirements to identify areas that need implementation or improvement.
3. Develop an implementation plan: Define the necessary activities, documents, resources, timelines, and responsibilities to develop your QMS.
4. Create required documentation: Document the quality policy, objectives, procedures, processes, and other needed information per ISO 9001 requirements.
5. Train employees: Educate all employees on the relevance and importance of ISO 9001 and how they contribute to the QMS.
6. Conduct internal audits: Perform regular internal audits throughout the implementation process to gauge progress.
7. Select a certification body: Research and select an accredited registrar to conduct your certification audit.
8. Formal certification audit: The registrar performs an on-site audit to verify your QMS meets all requirements for certification.
9. Obtain certification: Once certified, you can promote and advertise your ISO 9001 certification to customers and stakeholders.
10. Conduct ongoing surveillance audits: Registrars perform periodic audits (usually annually) to ensure you maintain compliance.

How Much Does It Cost to Get ISO 9001 Certification?

ISO 9001 certification cost can vary considerably depending on the size and complexity of an organization. However, typical costs include:

• Consultant fees to establish or improve the QMS: $5,000-$20,000+
• Initial certification audit by registrar: $1,000-$5,000+
• ISO 9001 registration fees paid annually: $500-$2,000+
• Internal audit, training, and maintaining the QMS: $3,000-$10,000+ per year
• Surveillance audits by registrar to renew certification: $1,000-$3,000 every 6-12 months

Larger organizations or those with multiple sites have higher costs for comprehensive audits. Complex operations or industries like medical devices or automotive may also require more extensive audits. Many organizations find the investment worth the added assurance, efficiency, and competitive edge.

Why Is ISO 9001 Important?

ISO standards are recognized worldwide. Doing business globally is much easier with a standard set of established practices and expectations. Even if your company is entirely domestic, understanding ISO 9001 regulations and how they might apply to your company is valuable.

A quality management framework helps you increase market share, implement quality fundamentals, and drive improvement activities. It’s a valuable roadmap to becoming a world-class organization. The internal and external audits required for maintaining ISO 9001 certification hold the organization accountable for its quality management principles.

Following a framework for quality management can streamline the process and eliminate confusion about expectations. A framework can also improve efficiency and encourage progress while your company grows. These continuous improvements can inspire confidence among your customers, board, and other stakeholders.

Streamlining ISO 9001 Compliance with Management Software

Compliance audits for ISO (or any other regulatory framework) can be confusing and labor-intensive. Understanding requirements, performing internal audits, and documenting your efforts can all seem daunting.

Consider using compliance management software like ZenGRC instead of spreadsheets to streamline activities for all your compliance frameworks. These tools offer:

• Cross-mapping standard requirements across multiple compliance frameworks.
• A single source of truth to ensure your organization is prepared for audits.
• Revision-controlled policies and procedures in a document repository.
• Workflow management features with easy tracking, automated reminders, and audit trails.
• Insightful reporting and dashboards providing visibility to gaps and high-risk areas.
• Monitoring for the entire life cycle of your compliance and risk management program.

Take the Next Step Toward ISO 9001 Success

Implementing ISO 9001 is a challenging, but rewarding task that can transform how your organization approaches quality management. By understanding the standard’s principles and requirements and following a structured approach to implementation and certification, you can enhance customer satisfaction, improve operational efficiency, and gain a competitive edge in your industry.

Whether you’re just beginning to explore ISO 9001 or are well along in your certification journey, the commitment to quality management principles will yield significant benefits for your organization, your customers, and your stakeholders.
Schedule a demo today and learn how ZenGRC can help you build your company’s compliance program.

“Corporate compliance” means that your company and its employees follow the laws, regulations, standards, and ethical practices applicable to your operating environment.

In today’s data-driven landscape, however, compliance officers need quantitative measures to assess compliance performance. To do this, they must identify Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for their compliance program.

Tracking these KPIs provides deeper insights into the organization’s policy and regulatory compliance posture. KPIs also communicate the strengths and weaknesses of the compliance function to relevant stakeholders.

So, what are the best metrics to measure a compliance program’s effectiveness? This article addresses the role of KPIs in compliance management. First, let’s explore the benefits of KPIs.

What Are the Benefits of Measuring Compliance Effectiveness?

A robust compliance program is essential to assure adherence to both internal policies and external regulations. Such a program provides a systematic set of guidelines to:

• Set the right expectations around compliance practices and employee behaviors;
• Keep employees focused on following the rules that help the organization achieve its goals and mission;
• Minimize the possibility of regulatory fines and expensive lawsuits;
• Prevent customer churn due to non-compliance.

But more is needed to implement a compliance program. It is also essential to measure it against key benchmarks to enhance effectiveness, identify gaps, and align with regulatory requirements.

Enhance Compliance Effectiveness

Measuring compliance effectiveness is the first step to managing, maintaining, and enhancing compliance effectiveness. By measuring compliance, you can better understand whether the organization’s policies, documents, manuals, and internal controls reduce risk and improve compliance.

Identify and Address Gaps

By measuring compliance effectiveness, you can identify gaps and determine if you need more staff or better technology..

Keep Up with Regulatory Demands

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released updated guidelines about what compliance programs should be able to do to be deemed “effective.” Periodic assessments of the program’s performance were one of those capabilities – and that requires KPIs and metrics.

What Are Compliance Metrics?

With relevant, comprehensive, and up-to-date compliance metrics and KPIs, you can measure your company’s ability to remain aligned with internal policies, external rules, and government regulations. You can better understand how well your organization’s compliance program is (or isn’t) operating.

Compliance KPIs provide an “early warning system” to detect compliance issues quickly so you can fix the problems and improve your controls. You can prevent fines, regulatory damage, customer churn, financial losses, and bad publicity by taking prompt action.

Some compliance metrics may also be known as key risk indicators or KRIs. KRIs are crucial indicators of potential risk. They can help you with risk assessment and check whether existing controls are helping to reduce the effect of these risks.

How is compliance measured?

Compliance is measured by employing specific metrics to assess various aspects of a compliance program. Key metrics include:

1. Mean Time to Issue Discovery: This metric measures identifying compliance issues quickly. It’s calculated by dividing the total time to discover all compliance issues by the total number of incidents.
2. Mean Time to Issue Resolution: This metric gauges the efficiency of issue resolution. It’s calculated by dividing the total time to resolve all issues by the total number of issues.
3. Compliance Expense Per Issue: This metric determines the cost-effectiveness of the compliance program by dividing the total compliance budget by the number of issues managed.
4. Severity Gap Between Predicted and Actual Risks: This metric assesses the accuracy of risk assessments by comparing predicted risk severity to actual severity, both financially and operationally.
5. Risk Mitigation Timeframe: This metric measures the time it takes to implement changes necessary to mitigate identified risks.

Accurate measurement is reliant on advanced technology and reporting capabilities. These metrics provide organizations with valuable insights into their compliance programs’ effectiveness, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness, enabling ongoing improvement and risk management.

How to Use Risk Management to Establish Compliance KPIs

Effective compliance begins with the risk management process, which determines your organization’s objectives.

Determine Organizational Objectives

You can only measure compliance effectiveness with baseline goals. To identify those goals, you need to ask some critical questions like:

• What are the enterprise-wide objectives?
• What risk mitigation strategies enhance business performance and strengthen profitability?
• What kind of unexpected events may reduce operational efficiency?
• Which risks may affect current or future revenue streams?
• What is the likelihood of these new risk events?

The above list shows that to create appropriate compliance KPIs, you need to consider not only present risks but future risks and potential challenges as well. It’s also crucial to consider that different industries have different objectives, which may require different compliance KPIs.

Assess Compliance Risks

To identify the correct compliance KPIs for your organization, you must assess the compliance risks you face – that is, the chance that you will not be able to meet your regulatory compliance obligations. To do this, ask questions like:

• What compliance obligations would pose the biggest enforcement threats if we fail to meet them?
• Given our current operating processes, which compliance obligations will we likely not meet?  (Your most likely risks might differ from your most significant risks.)
• What processes that we have now support our efforts to meet compliance objectives?
• What are the most reliable, data-driven ways to assess whether those processes work as intended?

What Are Some Key Metrics and KPIs My Compliance Officer Can Use?

As mentioned, every organization is different, and no “one size fits all” solution exists. That said, some standard compliance metrics can give you a starting point.

Employee Complaints About Misconduct

If an employee claims misconduct within the organization, it can have severe repercussions for its reputation and financial standing. That’s why it’s critical to measure the number of employee complaints and the nature of those complaints. 

Measure complaints by type of allegation: harassment, illegal activity, fraud, anti-trust, unethical behaviors, discrimination, etc. Find data to clarify questions such as:

• How many employees have filed complaints?
• What are they alleging?
• Did they complain through an anonymous hotline or go directly to a supervisor or functional head?
• Was the allegation substantiated or not?

Compliance Expense

This metric is critical for understanding which compliance issues or controls cost more to resolve than others and why. Measuring the time and effort to execute compliance activities can help you implement the most appropriate initiatives to strengthen your compliance program.

For instance, you can judge whether automation can be a feasible solution to reduce the expense of due diligence. Or perhaps a significant amount of time is spent following up on audit findings, and a workflow tool could help alleviate these tasks.

Mean Time to Issue Discovery (MTTD)

MTTD is a critical metric to measure compliance effectiveness since it shows:

• How quickly your compliance program can discover an issue;
• Whether you have a strong speak-up culture,
• If you have appropriate data monitoring capabilities to identify incidents.

To calculate MTTD, you must ascertain:

• When the issue first started (via interviews or forensic investigations),
• When the compliance team discovered it.

Mean Time to Issue Resolution (MTTR)

MTTR shows how quickly you can resolve discovered compliance issues. MTTR is important because it could indicate:

• Resource shortages;
• Lack of technology;
• Too many manual processes could be replaced by automation.

To calculate MTTR, add up the total time for all issues to be resolved. Then, divide this number by the total number of issues.

For best insights, avoid combining too many issues into one MTTR metric and track MTTR for each type of issue.

You can also track the time between discovering a risk and implementing changes to mitigate that risk. This metric shows how agile the compliance program is at implementing necessary changes and adapting to evolving risk circumstances. To calculate this time, add the mitigation times for all risks and divide by the total number of mitigated risks.

Other Compliance Metrics to Measure

In addition to the above metrics, you can better understand the company’s risk level by measuring metrics like:

• Violations of laws and industry regulations: To prevent the recurrence of violations, it’s crucial to understand the root cause of previous violations.
• Compliance investigations or audits:  It’s critical to keep track of internal audits performed and the findings and recommendations that resulted. You should also be able to track whether weaknesses were corrected and whether recommendations were implemented.
• Risk reductions: If certain risks have diminished (say, as a result of improving your internal controls and compliance policies), you should measure and document these changes.

Also, a culture survey should be included in a compliance report, explaining how the company is perceived by employees and in the public eye.

Tips for choosing which compliance KPIs to prioritize

Selecting the right Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for compliance is essential for effectively measuring and managing your compliance program. Here are some tips to help you prioritize the most relevant KPIs:

Step 1: Assess Available Data Sources for Regulatory Compliance

Commence your journey to selecting the right regulatory compliance Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by comprehending the data sources at your disposal. Beyond the traditional compliance department, explore data from various parts of your organization, such as HR, sales, and more. These rich, untapped sources can provide valuable insights into cultural health, brand reputation, and subtle forms of retaliation.

Step 2: Contextualize Each Data Point for Risk Assessment

Putting each data point in context for practical risk assessment and regulatory compliance is crucial. This involves understanding how to interpret the data and evaluating its relevance to your compliance program’s objectives and regulatory requirements. Contextualization empowers you to make informed decisions on resource allocation, compellingly present compliance insights to your senior management, and ultimately foster a more ethical and compliant organizational culture.

Step 3: Collaborative Data Assessment for Key Compliance Metrics

Collaborate with your compliance officers and compliance team to ensure a comprehensive approach in selecting key compliance metrics. Use our Compliance KPIs worksheet to perform a health check on your current data analysis. This collaborative effort can uncover surprising insights. 

Tracking compliance performance over time

In an era of stakeholder capitalism, where regulators, employees, and customers expect more from the companies they engage with, the need to measure the ethical health of your organization has never been more critical. Giving your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) the respect and attention they deserve is essential.

Tracking compliance performance over time is not a destination but a continuous journey toward ethical excellence. It’s about understanding where you stand today, setting benchmarks for where you want to be, and consistently improving your compliance program to meet evolving demands and expectations from regulators, employees, and customers. 

Let ZenGRC Streamline Your Compliance Program

It’s a challenge to keep up with the evolving compliance landscape. Streamline compliance management with Reciprocity ZenGRC. Instead of using spreadsheets, adopt ZenGRC to cut compliance costs and centralize compliance management.

A single source of truth assures your organization is always audit-ready. Policies and procedures are revision-controlled and easy to find in the document repository. Workflow management features offer easy tracking, automated reminders, and audit trails. Insightful reporting and dashboards provide visibility to gaps and high-risk areas.

ZenGRC is intuitive and easy to use. Schedule a free demo today.

Any organization that uses information technology should conduct cybersecurity risk assessments from time to time.

Each organization, however, faces its own unique set of security risks and needs to tailor its approach to addressing those specific risks within its risk management processes.

To get started, you first need to identify all your organization’s IT assets, which might be subject to those risks. Then, you can understand the losses you might incur should certain risk events happen and implement prudent steps to keep those risks in check.

IT assets include servers, customer contact information, sensitive partner documents, and trade secrets.

Some assets are physical, such as computing devices; others are electronic, such as data or software. Not all assets are of equal value, either. Some are more costly than others, and some have higher risk exposure.

Each asset has different associated risks, and the importance (the “criticality”) also varies. Your cybersecurity risk management plan will need to account for all those factors.

What is an IT Risk Analysis?

Information Technologies (IT) Risk Analysis is a process of identifying potential threats and vulnerabilities to your IT systems to establish what loss you might expect to incur if certain events happen. Its objective is to help your risk mitigation initiatives at a reasonable cost.

Creating an Asset Register for IT Risk Analysis

Risk assessments typically take one of two approaches. The most common is to start by compiling an inventory of your IT assets; the other method is to consider various scenarios or identified risks that can lead to a compromised asset or breach.

An asset-based risk assessment starts with an asset register or asset inventory. This document specifies all the places where sensitive information is stored and the asset’s estimated value.

So, one of the first things an organization should do when performing a cybersecurity risk assessment is to identify those IT assets.

Creating an asset register helps to clarify what is valuable in your company and who is responsible for it. You need to know what you have and who is in charge of protecting those assets to understand the technology risks to your company entirely.

First, generate the register itself: the list of hardware, software, devices, and databases that store sensitive information.

To do this, consult with the asset owners. An “asset owner” is the person or entity responsible for controlling an information asset’s production, development, maintenance, use, and security.

The asset owners will be familiar with how information moves through their departments. Involving them in the process will be quicker and less intrusive than having your implementation or compliance team go through the entire company.

What are Assets for IT Analysis

It might be that asset owners aren’t sure what assets fall within their responsibility. In that case, recommend that they list all the software they use, the documents in their binders and file cabinets, the employees in the department, and the equipment in their office, among others. Assets might include:

• Hardware: laptops, servers, printers, cell phones, USB sticks, authentication keys.
• Software: purchased software and free software.
• Information: electronic media, such as databases, PDF files, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and the like, as well as paper documents. This also could include sensitive data.
• Infrastructure: offices, electricity, and air conditioning (the loss of these assets can cause information to be unavailable).
• Outsourced services: Legal services, shipping services, online services (Dropbox, Gmail, and so forth). These aren’t assets in the purest sense of the word, but you control these services the same way as assets, which is why they are often included in an asset inventory.
• Human Resources: The employees in each department and their access to the IT infrastructure. These also aren’t assets in the purest sense, but they manage and run your business operations and could potentially lead to a data breach.

Identifying Risks to Your Listed Information Assets

When executing the risk assessment, identify the risks these different types of assets might encounter. The purpose of an information security risk assessment is to help inform stakeholders and decision-makers about the risks they face so that they can consider and support proper risk responses. So, think expansively about what risks might happen and how.

Hardware

With the increase in Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies, the hardware risks that affect companies also extend to employees’ personal equipment. At the same time, technology solutions are available to enforce removable media policies, limiting unauthorized extraction of information and malware infection.

Software

The principal risks of your company’s software are its vulnerabilities and the ease with which cybercriminals can exploit them to infect your organization.

Vulnerability scanners can help here by highlighting vulnerable software and pending security updates. Updating your tools and enforcing shadow IT and legacy software policies significantly reduces cybersecurity risks.

Infrastructure

The risk identification process can only be completed by considering infrastructure risks. Physical access controls are crucial in mitigating unauthorized access to critical systems.

At the same time, natural disasters are specific threats that hinge upon local geographic factors. Business continuity and data security policies must be in place to prevent cyberattacks during these critical events.

Outsourced Services

Your organization may rely on various third-party services for its operations. This includes traditional vendors and cloud service providers for your information systems.

Your information security risk assessment should consider your suppliers’ risks and data protection policies to determine their risk level. This activity allows your company to assess third-party risk and the cost-benefit of these services.

Human Resources

Human resources present risks that your company should assess, too. For example, phishing attacks are common cyber threats that depend heavily on the cybersecurity awareness of your employees. Malicious insiders may also exist, so implement security controls to identify and intercept potentially dangerous behavior patterns.

Manage and Mitigate Risks with Help from RiskOptics ROAR

Whether your organization has its IT team to conduct an information security risk assessment or outsource the task, the RiskOptics ROAR platform can help make the process easier for you.

As part of the ROAR functions, it helps your organization implement, manage, and monitor your risk management framework. Prioritize tasks with automated workflows so everyone knows what to do and when. Insightful reporting and dashboards visualize information, making it easy to share with stakeholders.

On the compliance end, RiskOptiks ROAR has templates to help your organization streamline the complete lifecycle management of all your relevant cybersecurity risk management frameworks, including PCI-DSS, NIST, HIPAA, and more.

Contact us today for a free consultation and demo and start managing risk worry-free the Zen way!

In today’s unpredictable business environment, your organization is more important than ever to be protected against cybercrime. One of the best ways to ensure that your data is safe is to enforce Identity and Access Management (IAM) — a method for defining the roles and privileges of individual users within your network.

Identity and access management is about confirming that only authorized users have the appropriate access to your technology resources. Ultimately, IAM aims to prevent data breaches and unauthorized access to your systems. IAM is an essential component of risk management and security controls and should receive special attention as part of your overall cloud security and risk management plan.

For larger organizations, especially, identity and access management can be a complex process. However, implementing IAM throughout your business or industry is a worthy investment that could help prevent the heftier fines resulting from a data breach.

Before you can enforce any of the identity and access management best practices we provide, you’ll need a complete overview of your IT infrastructure, systems, and assets so that you can closely monitor all of these elements for any potential or existing vulnerabilities.

Once you have this information, implement the identity and access management best practices outlined below. But first, it’s essential to understand why identity and access management is a critical practice so you can better rationalize the benefits of such an investment.

Why Identity and Access Management?

Identity and access management has numerous benefits. The most obvious is that it’s a practice that will effectively protect your business interests, information assets, and stakeholders from cybercrime.

Cybercriminals are constantly stepping up their efforts to infiltrate your information systems, and global disruptions like the COVID-19 pandemic create unique opportunities for cybercriminals to do just that. The rise in cybercrime during the pandemic is no coincidence; as these international events become more frequent, so will cyberattacks.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations shifted to a hybrid working environment, where their employees spend some or all of their time working from home. This change has made identity and access management more critical for cybersecurity than ever before, as employees suddenly needed to gain access to employers’ data remotely.

Despite the pandemic, however, it’s becoming more urgent for modern businesses to equip themselves with identity and access management best practices and tools to help them navigate an increasingly interconnected world.

Moreover, identity and access management is more than just a good idea for keeping your information and systems secure. It must also comply with various regulations, including GDPR, SOX, HIPAA, and CCPA.

Key components of identity access management

Identity management is critical to an organization’s overall cybersecurity strategy. IAM refers to the processes and technologies for managing user access permissions and authentication across an organization’s systems, data, and applications. The goal of IAM is to ensure only authorized users have access to sensitive resources while making access easy and secure for the workforce.

Some of the key elements of a robust IAM program include:

• Multifactor authentication (MFA): Requiring an additional verification factor beyond a password enhances security. MFA options include one-time codes sent via SMS or generated by an authentication app, biometric scans like fingerprint or facial recognition, security keys, etc.
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Instead of assigning permissions directly to individual accounts, RBAC ties access privileges to specific roles. This simplifies access management as an organization’s needs evolve.
• Single Sign-On (SSO): allows users to authenticate once to access any permitted resources securely. This improves user experience and productivity.
• Automated provisioning and de-provisioning: Automatically granting access when new employees join and revoking it when they leave an organization is essential for security.
• APIs and integration: IAM should integrate robustly with an organization’s diverse systems and applications via secured APIs.

9 Best Practices for Identity and Access Management

Whether you’re already using IAM and want to improve your program to meet emerging threats or are interested in building an IAM program from scratch, you should consider several best practices.

1. Maintain a Centralized Approach

Keeping tabs on your systems and networks is already complicated enough; users, portals, databases, and applications are all moving simultaneously and performing their respective tasks. So, tackle the challenge with a centralized approach.

Why? Identity and access management clarifies the responsibility of monitoring all your network users and ensures they can only access the data for which they have been granted permission. Centralizing your identity and access management program will not only provide a more harmonious and audited user experience. It will also offer greater consolidated visibility for all of your network managers.

Keeping things as simple as possible will make the process less overwhelming and easier to update your program to reflect any new vulnerabilities to your organization’s cybersecurity.

2. Identify Risk

While most businesses have transitioned to cloud-based applications and frameworks, many organizations still need legacy systems with safety and security updates. Storing confidential information using these unpatched and outdated systems makes your organization much more vulnerable to cybercrime.

An up-to-date inventory of your company’s programs and applications will help you determine whether they could be potential security threats. Any legacy programs should be replaced with systems quickly deployed and seamlessly integrated with the other programs in your information network.

You should also evaluate the risk for individual users in your network and any third parties or developers. As part of your access review program, conducting regular user access reviews can help you consider who in your organization has access to which features of your system — and your sensitive data.

This IAM best practice is especially relevant if your organization has not conducted a risk analysis or assessment since moving to a hybrid work environment, as the risks you face now may have changed.

A remote access policy will help spell out precisely what your organization will do to provide cybersecurity while your users access data off-site and what’s expected of your users. Such a policy will help keep your corporate data safe from exposure to hackers, malware, and other threats to your cybersecurity while employees work from remote locations.

3. Use the Principle of Least Privilege

Also known as the Principle of Least Authority, the Principle of Least Privilege (POLP) means that you assign specific access privileges to users, which will only allow those users to access data that is essential to the performance of their roles and responsibilities.

One way to implement POLP is via Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), limiting non-essential access to sensitive information and the number of privileged accounts. RBAC can reduce the risk of internal and external data breaches, help further identify security for individual and group users, define and enhance your business process, and improve your overall cybersecurity visibility.

4. Employ Zero Trust

Zero trust is a principle that can help you preserve the integrity of your information assets under the assumption that you trust no one and suspect everyone. It’s one of the most straightforward identity and access management best practices. Your system or network won’t immediately bestow trust to a user because they could provide the correct user ID and password.

Instead, the zero trust model involves implementing additional measures requiring further validation before granting user access privileges (mainly when data is accessed from multiple ports and platforms). For example, you might adopt multi-factor authentication and require longer passwords that are easier for a specific user to remember but harder for hackers to guess.

This best practice will help you deter cybercriminals since they will have several additional security barriers to contend with past the initial password entry, making them more likely to move on to an easier target.

5. Use Multi-factor Authentication

These days, passwords alone aren’t enough to protect your confidential personal and corporate information. Whether it’s a result of carelessness or a lack of guidance, many users still use (and even reuse) generic passwords across some accounts and platforms. Unfortunately, this practice makes it easier for cybercriminals to access all your accounts and networks: they only need to get your password correct once.

Multi-factor authentication systems add more security barriers between the access request page and the location where the data is stored. Cybercriminals are more likely to follow the path of least resistance, so the more layers you have, the less likely a breach will occur— because the hacker will move on to the next potential target.

Your organization should consider one or a combination of the following multi-factor authentication methods to implement this best practice for identity and access management:

• Password policies or passcodes
• Challenge/response methods
• SMS messaging systems
• Magnetic stripe cards or card security codes
• Biometrics
• Security tokens
• Time of access request monitoring
• Geofencing

6. Automate the Onboarding Process

In addition to managing your current employees and their user privileges, you must account for the onboarding process when hiring new team members and orient them on your company’s IT safety and security policies. 

Automating the onboarding process will enable your employees to understand better, early on, your organization’s framework for the access privileges they will receive — everything from generally shared directories to precise folders and drives. This best practice is more practical than automatically granting all users access to your company’s entire information network and then revoking privileges only when asked.

Once the potential for data abuse within your organization is adequately controlled, your IT team will be free to devote time and effort to preventing external (and often more severe) threats to your cybersecurity.

7. Dispose of Orphaned Accounts

It’s also vital that your organization monitors and disposes of any orphaned or dormant accounts with access to your systems or network. Such accounts are vulnerable entry points for cybercriminals to exploit, given the chance.

After an employee departs from your organization or moves to a new role or location, you must deactivate and remove the account and revoke user privileges. Otherwise, you’re allowing cybercriminals to breach your organization’s digital perimeter.

This identity and access management best practice is successful when management or your HR team immediately informs IT security teams of any employee departure so the IT team can update its roster of user accounts and any corresponding access privileges.

8. Train Employees

Your employees need to understand their role in identity and access management. Regular training for your staff will emphasize the importance of following these best practices and will equip them with the knowledge to do so.

Help employees understand why using strong passwords and tools like multi-factor authentication is essential to keep their accounts (and data) safe from cybercrime.

9. Select Software Solutions

Your organization will have specific IT safety and security needs and requirements depending on your size, employee headcount, user access requirements, and business objectives. Similarly, your business will need to anticipate unique threats to your security, depending on your industry and the types of data you store.

To address the various factors facing your organization, you should select and implement identity and access management solutions tailored to your entity’s needs. These include scalable and easy-to-deploy applications, devices, and systems that offer multi-level security features and authentication protocols so that user workflows can be specified and streamlined to optimize productivity.

Here are some IAM tools you should consider to help you govern and manage identity and access management throughout your organization:

• Single Sign-On (SSO): this tool allows one login to verify the user’s identity. It permits the user to log on once and be authenticated automatically for the internal systems and applications to which they have assigned access.
• Risk-based authentication: this tool calculates a user’s risk of performing specific actions before allowing the user to proceed. If the risk is too high, the device blocks the action and notifies IT.
• Identity analytics: this tool records logins, authorization attempts and events, and related activities for review and troubleshooting.

Identity and access management tools are precious; your organization should use them wherever possible. Ultimately, you need a solution to ensure meeting your regulatory compliance needs, monitoring and managing risks, keeping track of third-party access and bets, managing workflows, and keeping a well-organized document trail for use come audit time.

Common identity and access management risks

Implementing robust Identity and Access Management (IAM) is crucial yet complex for organizations. IAM projects carry many inherent risks that must be appropriately managed to avoid failure. Some of the most common pitfalls include:

• Lack of executive buy-in: Gaining ongoing commitment from leadership is essential. Having an executive sponsor can help secure necessary resources and drive required changes.
• Poor stakeholder engagement: The project needs input from diverse voices across the organization to balance security, productivity, and user experience. Clear, ongoing communication about the IAM policies and program objectives is key.
• Incorrect technology procurement: IAM solutions must be purchased to match the organization’s specific infrastructure, systems, and business needs. While leaning on security team expertise, procurement should take a broad perspective.
• Inflexible strategy and scale: The IAM approach must accommodate growth, new technologies, and evolving cyber threats over time. Scaling capabilities need to be built in from the start.
• Neglecting policies and people: The human element is crucial. Feedback loops should be instituted to understand the access needs of different users and departments. Auditing teams also need to ensure efficiency and security.
• Lack of project management – Like any IT project, clear milestones, timelines, and segmenting work can prevent drift and delays.

Beyond these risks, fundamental challenges remain around balancing robust multifactor authentication, single sign-on, access controls, and auditing capabilities with user productivity and experience.

A holistic approach considering the technology, people, and processes is essential for IAM’s success. With risks properly addressed, organizations can securely optimize access and workflows aligned to business priorities.

ZenGRC Is Your Security Management Solution

Identity and access management is challenging, and you’ve got enough on your plate. Good Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) software can help make planning for and enforcing identity and access management much more accessible.

ZenGRC from RiskOptics automatically performs compliance and audit tasks for you, so you don’t have to. It also automates information sharing by sending out reminders to complete tasks and creating “to-do” lists for risk remediation, streamlining the process to make it less burdensome and more likely to be completed promptly.

Zen also connects your user list and other resources via automation, allowing consistent documentation come audit time. Workflow and audit documentation from ZenGRC engages all parties in communication, closing the gaps that lead to regulatory compliance issues. It also shares information across relationships; if any items are updated across the GRC space, any department can view evidence of the related items and controls.

Let ZenGRC help you implement your organization’s best identity and access management program. Schedule a demo today to discover how to practice IAM lifecycle the Zen way.

If your company processes credit or debit card transactions you likely are already familiar with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Compliance with these requirements is necessary to retain the right to process all the major credit card brands.

Some companies process their transactions in the cloud using companies like Amazon Web Services (AWS). Using a cloud-based Cardholder Data Environment (CDE) has several benefits, including security. Cloud security entails a shared responsibility; a platform such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) uses a shared responsibility model for securing customer data, meaning both parties are responsible for protecting sensitive data.

A public cloud computing platform typically provides security for the platform only, not for the information stored within the platform. Suppose you use AWS services or another cloud environment to process your credit card transactions. In that case, you must understand the PCI-DSS requirements and your responsibilities regarding protecting customer data.

What Is PCI-DSS?

Major credit card companies in 2004 created the PCI DSS standards to protect sensitive cardholder data. It is overseen by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC). By holding all entities that process credit cards to the same standards, the PCI SSC tries to assure consistent service for consumers, regardless of the size and location of the companies whose services they use.

How you prove your PCI compliance depends on how many credit card transactions you perform annually. The PCI DSS divides companies into four levels: Level 1 companies have the highest volume of transactions, and Level 4 has the least. Level 1 merchants have more stringent requirements and will need an external audit. Still, most companies will fall into the lower categories and be able to prove their compliance with a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ).

What Are the Requirements for PCI-DSS Compliance?

Broadly speaking, there are 12 main PCI requirements:

1. Use firewalls for data protection.
2. Avoid using default passwords and other generic security measures.
3. All stored cardholder data must be protected.
4. Transmission of cardholder data must be encrypted.
5. Antivirus software should be used and updated regularly.
6. All systems and applications processing customer data should be secure and properly maintained.
7. Cardholder data access should be restricted on a need-to-know basis.
8. Each staff member with access to data should have a unique ID.
9. Physical access to cardholder data should be banned.
10. Access to cardholder data should be tracked and monitored.
11. Security systems should be tested regularly.
12. Create and maintain appropriate information security policies.

These requirements are divided into 281 sub-directives, which may or may not apply to your organization depending on how your credit cards are processed. A company using an AWS account to process its transactions will be subject to different requirements than a brick-and-mortar store that only processes cards in person.

Why Do Service Providers Require PCI Compliance?

The PCI DSS Cloud Computing Guidelines define “Cloud Service Provider” (CSP) as “the entity providing the cloud service. It acquires and manages the infrastructure required for providing the services, runs the cloud software that provides the services, and delivers the cloud services through network access.”

PCI DSS requires that cloud providers whose environment is used for processing, storing, or transmitting payment card data be PCI DSS compliant. The standard also holds you, the platform merchant, responsible for assuring that the provider properly secures the cardholder data from your account. You also must delineate which PCI DSS standards are yours to meet, which the provider must meet, and which one’s third parties, such as payment gateways, should meet.

Using definitions supplied by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), the guidelines define four different types of CSP, all of which should be PCI DSS-compliant if they are used for cardholder data:

• Public cloud. In this model, cloud services can be available to anyone; the CSP controls the environment. Public networks have broad boundaries with few restrictions on access.
• Private cloud. One entity uses and controls the environment and its services. The organization or a third party may manage the private cloud, which may be on- or off-premises. Only the entity’s customers have access.
• Community cloud. A group with shared requirements uses the services; one or more members control them. Community clouds limit participation in a group with shared objectives.
• Hybrid cloud. A composite of two or more clouds (private, community, or public) that users can switch through as needed for greater flexibility.

Before using cloud services to process sales transactions, the PCI guidelines state that you should perform the following tasks:

• Understand your risk and security requirements.
• Choose a deployment model that aligns with your and your industry’s security and risk requirements.
• Evaluate different service options.
• Know what you want from your provider.
• Compare providers and service offerings.
• Ask questions of the provider and verify the responses, including:
  • What does each service consist of, and how is the service delivered?
  • What do the service providers do for security maintenance, PCI DSS compliance, segmentation, and assurance, and for what are you responsible?
  • How will the CSP provide ongoing evidence that security controls remain in place and are kept up to date?
  • What will the provider commit to in writing?
  • Are other parties involved in the service delivery, security, or support?
• Document everything with your provider in written agreements – Service Level Agreements (SLAs)/Terms of Service contracts.
• Request written assurances that security controls will be in place and conduct periodic verification (such as compliance reports) that controls remain maintained.
• Review the service and written agreements periodically to identify whether anything has changed.

What Is AWS PCI Compliance?

Although AWS security is stronger than many alternatives, it remains vulnerable when businesses need to practice due diligence. Many AWS resources are available to users, but certain security aspects will fall to the user. For example, a company is responsible for assuring data encryption, limiting information volume transferred to the AWS cloud, detailing its compliance strategy, incorporating role-based access controls, and using multi-factor authentication.

Despite the ability to transfer some risks to the service providers, the ultimate responsibility for information security rests on the organization hiring the vendor.

How Does the Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) Help Protect Data?

The Amazon VPC acts as a logically isolated segment within the AWS cloud. Virtualization allows a merchant to create a private cardholder storage network, helping meet the PCI DSS segmentation requirement.

Segmentation works to protect cardholder data from information security threats across the entire IT environment.

Imagine information as a jewelry collection. Costume jewelry may need no absolute protection and be left in public areas of a home. Sterling silver jewelry requires additional protection due to its value and may be stored in a private room. Gold jewelry requires an extra layer of security based on its importance and may be hidden in a locked box within a private room. Finally, precious stones like diamonds may be removed from the home entirely and segmented into a private deposit box at a bank.

Segmenting information within your IT environment works similarly. Removing the most precious cardholder data from your environment and securing it helps keep it safe.

How Does the AWS VPC Help Protect Information?

Segmentation not only means securing cardholder data separately; it also means incorporating additional protections. Unfortunately, security protections often integrate sending more information requests to a cloud services provider.

The first protection layer uses Transport Layer Security (TLS) and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to protect information. In short, computers talk to one another across the internet. The computer’s browser requests a security certificate, the website responds with the certificate, and the browser allows access. That’s how visitors recognize an “official” website instead of malware/ransomware. Known as a TLS Handshake, the computers “talk” to one another by sending encrypted data back and forth.

Another way to describe it: imagine a school homework assignment where the answers to math problems aligned to a letter; those letters then allowed you to decode a sentence. A TLS Handshake works similarly. If the final “sentence” makes sense, the certificate is working.

That said, this security layer involves a lot of data moving back and forth between computers. That can slow down information transmission. Slower transmissions often mean angry customers.

How Does Elastic Load Balancing (ELB) Help?

ELB speeds up networked processes by distributing requests across different servers.

To take the math worksheet example above, assume a worksheet with 100 letters in its message. One person decoding all 100 letters may take an hour. If you distribute that message to two people, you cut down the time by a half-hour. Spreading the work to four people speeds up decoding to 15 minutes. The more people you have decoding the message, the less time it takes.

The AWS VPC ELB works similarly. It allows additional encryption layers by spreading the requests across multiple servers, speeding up information transmission times, and adding more data security.

What Is PCI Compliance in AWS?

AWS is a cloud service that allows customers to personalize their service use. The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) enables customers to create a cloud-based environment founded on their operating system. Using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) the customer chooses, an organization can build a personalized set of services meeting its specific needs.

To ease the burden further, Amazon EC2 incorporates the Amazon Machine Image (AMI), a software configuration template. In other words, the AMI allows you to set up a virtual version of your computer.

Using the AMI, you can process an “instance” or a set of objects that allow you to do business. In the case of AWS, these objects may be things like a shopping cart or cardholder data such as a customer name.

AMI allows multiple instances to run simultaneously, allowing you to personalize the experience in AWS to match business needs.

Is AWS PCI DSS Compliant?

Yes. AWS lists on its “Services in Scope” page the services for which qualified Security Assessors (QSA) have provided certification and Attestation of Compliance (AOC).

Currently, AWS offers more than 120 PCI DSS-compliant services. However, remember that AWS customers are not automatically compliant with PCI DSS. AWS only ensures that the portions of your operations within AWS are compliant.

AWS PCI Compliance Checklist

When it comes to ensuring PCI DSS compliance within the AWS environment, there are several key considerations and steps to follow. This checklist will guide you through the process, ensuring your AWS security measures align with the requirements of PCI DSS.

1. AWS Account Setup:

• Ensure your AWS account has the necessary permissions and access controls. Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) to manage user access and permissions.
• Activate AWS CloudTrail and AWS Config to log and monitor AWS services.

2. Data Protection:

• Use AWS RDS and EBS to store sensitive data, ensuring that cardholder data is encrypted.
• Implement SSL/TLS for data transmission.
• Utilize key management services for encryption key storage and management.

3. Network Security:

• Set up VPC to create an isolated AWS network environment.
• Implement security groups and network ACLs for inbound and outbound traffic control.
• Use firewall solutions to protect against unauthorized access.
• Ensure load balancing with AWS ELB to distribute incoming traffic across multiple targets.

4. Monitoring and Defense:

• Activate AWS GuardDuty for continuous monitoring and threat detection.
• Implement AWS Security Hub to view your security alerts and posture comprehensively.
• Use AWS CloudWatch for monitoring AWS resources and applications.
• Ensure anti-virus software is in place and regularly updated.
• Activate AWS WAF for protection against web exploits.

5. Access Control:

• Implement multi-factor authentication for added security.
• Restrict physical access to AWS resources.
• Ensure user access is based on the principle of least privilege.

6. Security Maintenance:

• Regularly apply security patches to all systems.
• Conduct vulnerability scanning and penetration testing to identify potential weaknesses.
• Use AWS Security Groups to define inbound and outbound traffic rules.

7. Documentation and Verification:

• Maintain an information security policy that aligns with PCI DSS standards.
• Work with a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) to verify your AWS PCI compliance.
• Obtain an Attestation of Compliance (AOC) after a successful audit.

8. Additional Considerations:

• Understand the shared responsibility model of AWS, especially when using AWS services in a cardholder data environment.
• Familiarize yourself with the FAQ section of AWS for any specific queries related to PCI requirements.
• Ensure that any API calls are secure and authenticated.
• Regularly review and update IAM roles, permissions, and templates.
• Monitor for malware and ensure systems are protected against it.

9. Service Provider Responsibilities:

• If you’re a service provider, understand your role in the PCI DSS compliance process. As a cloud service provider, AWS ensures that its portion of the workload in the AWS environment is PCI DSS compliant. However, the responsibility for ensuring applications, workloads, and data within AWS are compliant falls on the user.
• Familiarize yourself with the various AWS services, such as AWS CloudTrail, AWS Config, and others, that can help automate security controls and streamline the compliance process.

10. Payment Card Brands:

• Be aware of the specific requirements of major credit card brands like Visa and Discover. Each may have nuances in their PCI requirements.

You’ll achieve and maintain PCI compliance by following this checklist and ensuring that each point is addressed within your AWS environment. Remember, while AWS provides many tools and services to assist with compliance, the ultimate responsibility lies with the user to ensure that their specific workloads, data, and applications are PCI DSS compliant.

FAQs About PCI Cloud Compliance & AWS

How do you comply with PCI DSS?

PCI DSS compliance strategy revolves around achieving six specific security goals in line with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. These objectives are designed to provide robust protection for cardholder data:

1. Build a Secure Network and Systems
2. Protect the Cardholder’s Data
3. Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program
4. Implement Strong Access Control Measures
5. Regularly Monitor and Test Networks
6. Maintain an Information Security Policy

How Many Compliance Requirements Does PCI DSS Have?

PCI DSS consists of a total of 12 main compliance requirements. These requirements are to enhance cardholder data security and protect against data breaches. Each requirement is divided into sub-requirements and controls, totaling more than 280 individual directives in the standard. 

Manage PCI Compliance With ZenGRC

PCI DSS compliance can be a daunting task. Creating the appropriate controls and documenting their use is challenging, mainly if you still use outdated methods to track your company’s risk management efforts. To provide the best security for your customers, you need a risk management solution designed to organize and streamline the compliance process.

ZenGRC is an innovative software that automates and integrates your compliance, making tracking risk throughout your organization easy. It also provides transparency for your staff, board members, and auditors so everyone remains on the same page.

Schedule a demo today to learn how ZenGRC can help your company achieve PCI compliance.