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Evaluate your infrastructure and processes to support PCI-DSS requirements

Key updates and timelines for the new PCI-DSS 4.0 requirements

PCI-DSS 4.0 introduces updates to enhance the security of cardholder data, addressing current risks and technological advancements in the payment card industry. The revisions allows organizations to adopt customized security measures if they demonstrate compliance with security objectives, extending multi factor authentication to all access in the cardholder data environment, and strengthening encryption across all networks. Additionally, there is greater emphasis on continuous risk analysis and mitigation, and improving capabilities for timely detection and response to security incidents. These new requirements have a transition period to allow organizations time to adopt the new version while maintaining compliance under the existing standards.

Why CISOs should prioritize the latest pci-dss updates

Adhering to these updated standards is crucial for not only maintaining compliance, but for also protecting against new and emerging cyber threats and risks. By implementing these standards,organizations can be resilient against breaches, thereby protecting their reputations and avoiding potentially hefty fines for non-compliance.

Effective dateof DSS 4.0: March2024; actualized by March 2025.

PCI-DSS 4.0 emphasizes the importance of integrating continuous security processes into daily business operations

Compliance can’t just be a one-time assessment. This approach is vital for CISOs tasked with fostering a culture of security awareness and proactive risk management within their organizations. Embracing PCI-DSS 4.0 also helps drive business value by building a robust security infrastructure that underpins safe and secure payment environments.

Are your developers prepared to deliver compliant software?

Developers sit as an integral - yet often under utilized - part of reaching a state of software security excellence. It is crucial developers understand the broader picture of PCI DSS 4.0 and what they can control and integrate as part of their default approach to a software build.

Requirement 6 of the PCI DSS outlines expectations for developing and maintaining secure software

This includes a variety of items ranging from secure development standards to developer training to configuration and change control management. Any organizations that develop software used in a Cardholder data network (CHD) are required to comply with these mandates.

As outlined in requirement 6.2.2, software development personnel working on bespoke and custom software are trained at least once every 12 months as follows:

• On software security relevant to their job function and development languages.
• Including secure software design and secure coding techniques.
• Including how to use the security testing tools for detecting vulnerabilities in software.

The standard further outlines that training should include at least the following items:

• Development languages in use
• Secure software design
• Secure coding techniques
• Use of techniques/methods for finding vulnerabilities in code
• Processes to prevent reintroducing previously resolved vulnerabilities

Additionally, developers should be familiar with ALL of the attack techniques (outlined in Requirement 6.2.4.) This includes a list of attack categories designed to serve as examples:

• Injection attacks, including SQL, LDAP, XPath, or other command, parameter, object, fault, or injection-type flaws.
• Attacks on data and data structures, including attempts to manipulate buffers, pointers, input data, or shared data.
• Attacks on cryptography usage, including attempts to exploit weak, insecure, or inappropriate cryptographic implementations, algorithms, cipher suites, or modes of operation.
• Attacks on business logic, including attempts to abuse or bypass application features and functionalities through the manipulation of APIs, communication protocols and channels, client side functionality, or other system/application functions and resources. This includes cross-site scripting (XSS) and cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
• Attacks on access control mechanisms, including attempts to bypass or abuse identification, authentication, or authorization mechanisms, or attempts to exploit weaknesses in the implementation of such mechanisms.
• Attacks via any “high-risk” vulnerabilities identified in the vulnerability identification process, as defined inRequirement 6.3.1.

How Secure Code Warrior can help you achieve PCI-DSS 4.0 compliance

The most effective option for training is an agile learning platform where compliance becomes abyproduct of an overarching secure code learning program. Specifically, Secure Code Warrior can help your company reduce vulnerabilities and achieve greater developer productivity by:

• Delivering a solid, consistent understanding of how to keep PCI data safe by addressing gaps in knowledge and providing precision training in the languages and frameworks that your developers use. See more on our Learning Platform.
• Offering a continuous, measured, and established skills verification process to ensure training has been absorbed and put into practice. Learn more about our ready-made secure code training pathways for developers.
• Conducting training via agile learning methods that provide just-in-time, contextual microbursts of learning. Generic, infrequent training is no longer viable, and it won't have the desired impact on vulnerability reduction. Learn more about our supported vulnerabilities.
• Aiding in documenting security training and coding standards, useful for demonstrating compliance during PCI-DSS audits. For a more detailed breakdown of PCI-DSS 4.0, check out our whitepaper, PCI DSS 4.0 Unraveled.

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An industry first benchmark that quantifies the impact of your secure coding program

Software teams across enterprises are under more pressure to deliver quality, secure code faster and without fail before production. This has given rise to the concept of developer-driven security, a powerful movement that results in faster developer productivity, expedited movement throughout the software development cycle, and increased innovation, which ultimately leads to business growth. In the world of secure learning programs, despite undergoing identical secure code programs, teams often yield a spectrum of expertise, encompassing top performers, average achievers, and those who need additional support. But how can you tell what good looks like - and relative to what? Organizations are in need of a benchmark that defines the bell curve of their developers' security standing. A score that can be used as a baseline measurement of the current state of their security learning program, assess its effectiveness, and enable teams to optimize performance.

Value and benefits

• Simple, effective, meaningful data
• Measure security program success
• Increased software quality
• Improved team relationships
• Insight to secure coding skills
• Engaged users & developer retention

Benchmark the current state of your security program

Benchmark your security program against industry peers to establish a standard that aligns with your business goals. Utilizing benchmarks provides a baseline for performance comparison, enabling data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement opportunities to optimize your security posture.

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Measured in the context of peers, competition, and global organizations

SCW Trust Score measures your security program's effectiveness by aggregating individual learner skill levels, to calculate your organizational trust score. With benchmarks tailored to Banking & Financial Services, Technology, and Global industries, the report provides insights into your company trust score, industry benchmark distribution, and learner skill level distribution, with customizable drill-down and filter options.

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Have confidence in the most comprehensive security skill benchmark in the industry

SCW Trust Score is an industry-first solution that leverages a dynamic algorithm, harnessing insights from over 20 million learning data points collected from 600+ companies and 250,000 learners. It considers an array of learning activities completed within our platform, such as the depth of knowledge acquired about the OWASP Top 10. These unmatched insights help organizations measure their performance against others with confidence.

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Financial services institutions face an array of challenges that hinge on their ability to make efficient, effective use of technology in a fast-evolving financial world.

Organizations are operating in a time of rapid changes—both internally and across the industry—in a highly competitive, cloud-based business environment. In pursuing their ongoing digital transformations, for example, organizations are working to get around the organizational friction that hinders investments into new technologies, such as artificial intelligence, that could accelerate payment processes and other procedures. 

However, there also needs to be more awareness about how this growth impacts the ability to maintain a secure coding environment.

In this guide on security trends for financial service companies, you’ll discover:

• How AI development tools are impacting the software development lifecycle.
• Why increased regulation matters to financial services and how it impacts your team.
• What agile learning can do for your team’s secure coding.
• How the growth of third-party apps will contribute to your security landscape.
• Why the enhanced focus on ROI across teams doesn’t have to worry you when it comes to training.

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PCI DSS 4.0 Unraveled: Seize the opportunity to nail security upskilling for developers

If you’re an AppSec or development manager, you have likely noticed by now that most developers aren’t thrilled at the prospect of compliance training. Even the word “compliance” has most people stifling a yawn. However, it is a vital exercise, and we need to do better to capture the hearts and minds of the development cohort.

Secure software development is no longer a “nice to have” in any company; it should be front-of-mind in every organization. And if that organization holds vast amounts of sensitive customer information, it is ripe for the picking when it comes to costly cyberattacks. Developers are the first to get hands-on with code, and as such, should be just as involved as the rest of the team in any security compliance measures.

This is an opportunity for the developers and AppSec professionals to band together to pursue a higher standard of code. Ever so slowly, the world is catching up to the fact that, to date, developers haven’t exactly had the right tools at their disposal to make security a priority (and siloed security specialists cannot shoulder the responsibility alone). However, as the industry moves towards an AI-augmented, DevSecOps future with security as a shared responsibility, they can build the skill set needed to help stem the flow of recurring vulnerabilities.

The 2025 deadline to comply with PCI DSS 4.0 is the industry’s biggest opportunity yet to elevate developers with the skills and tech stack required to impact software security positively from the ground up. These latest guidelines are the most operations-flexible to date, and the time is now to create a potent, custom security program that places developers in the driver’s seat of meaningful change.

Read the no-nonsense guide to getting your development team on board with PCI DSS compliance, including:

• What is required of the modern developer to achieve PCI DSS 4.0 compliance.
• How security professionals and development managers can work together to build formidable, developer-driven security programs.
• Step-by-step recommendations of the most potent, rewarding training initiatives to reduce vulnerabilities for good.

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Artificial intelligence engines are starting to populate everywhere, with each new model and version seemingly bringing forth more powerful and impressive capabilities that can be applied in a variety of fields. One area that has been suggested as a good possible use case for AI is writing code, and some models have already proven their abilities using a multitude of programming languages.

However, the premise that AI could take over the jobs of human software engineers is overstated. All of the top AI models operating today have demonstrated critical limitations when it comes to their advanced programming prowess, not the least of which is their tendency to introduce errors and vulnerabilities into the code they compile at cracking speed. 

While it’s true that the use of AI can help save some time for overworked programmers, the future will likely be one where humans and AI work together, with talented personnel entirely in charge of applying critical thinking and precision skills that ensure all code is as secure as possible. As such, the ability to write secure code, spot vulnerabilities, and establish that applications are as protected as possible long before they ever enter a production environment is vital.

In this new white paper from Secure Code Warrior, you will learn:

• The pitfalls of blind trust in LLM code output.
• Why security-skilled developers are key to safely “pair programming” with AI coding tools.
• The best strategies to upskill the development cohort in the age of AI-assisted programming.
• An interactive challenge to showcase AI limitations (and how you can navigate them).

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