ACCOUNTING PRACTICES AND ENTRIES

Accounting Practices and Entries



Accounting Practices and Entries

Introduction

The PCI Security Audit Procedures are designed for use by assessors conducting onsite reviews for merchants and service providers required to validate compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) requirements. The requirements and audit procedures presented in this document are based on the PCI DSS.

Discussion

The PCI DSS security requirements apply to all “system components.” A system component is defined as any network component, server, or application that is included in or connected to the cardholder data environment. The cardholder data environment is that part of the network that possesses cardholder data or sensitive authentication data. Network components include but are not limited to firewalls, switches, routers, wireless access points, network appliances, and other security appliances. Server types include, but are not limited to the following: web, database, authentication, mail, proxy, network time protocol (NTP), and domain name server (DNS). Applications include all purchased and custom applications, including internal and external (internet) applications. Adequate network segmentation, which isolates systems that store, process, or transmit cardholder data from the rest of the network, may reduce the scope of the cardholder data environment.

Sampling

The assessor may select a representative sample of system components to test. The sample must be a representative selection of all of the types of system components, and include a variety of operating systems, functions, and applications that are applicable to the area being reviewed. For example, the reviewer could choose Sun servers running Apache WWW, NT servers running Oracle, mainframe systems running legacy card processing applications, data transfer servers running HP-UX, and Linux Servers running MYSQL. If all applications run from a single OS (for example, NT, Sun), then the sample should still include a variety of applications (for example, database servers, web servers, data transfer servers).

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