Data Security
How to Get PCI DSS Certified - Guide 2025
Jun 26, 2025
10
min read
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a self-governed security requirement created by Visa, Mastercard, JCB International, and Discover cards.
The credit card industry established the initial framework for all businesses' processing card payments. This framework establishes security rules and mandates that all companies adhere to help protect sensitive cardholder information.
A core component of sustaining a PCI-DSS certification is audit trails of the security controls and a review of the organization's policy supporting monitoring, incident response, and notification of breaches. As PCI-DSS regulations change, organizations must update their questionnaires and policies to reflect these annual changes and reduce compliance gaps.
Tiebreaker AI, a disruptive company in AI automation compliance, supports several mandates, including PCI-DSS. Their compliance automation provides a collaborative and secure workflow for companies to upload their PCI-DSS and required artifacts to a central depository. Tie-breaker AI retrieves the latest changes from the PCI-DSS Security Standards Council and assists clients in updating their various documents to help reduce the time and cost of audit preparation.
Is most of your PCI-DSS audit preparation, compliance efforts, and upkeep still manual and prone to human error?
If so, click here to schedule a demo of Tiebreaker AI's automation tool today!
Understanding PCI DSS Certification and Compliance Levels
The PCI DSS standard divides the certification and compliance process into four levels, depending on credit card processing volume. Each volume requires additional security controls, third-party penetration testing, and auditing.
Level 1
“Level 1 is based on the 1 million credit card transactions processed annually.” Level 1 businesses must complete an on-site risk assessment engagement executed by a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) and submit a completed report on compliance (ROC) to VISA and other payment services.
Note: all credit card levels must submit vulnerability scanning results completed by an approved scanning vendor (ASV). Quarterly scans are required at every level.
Level 2
Like level 1, level 2 businesses that execute 1 to 6 million credit card transactions must complete a QSA engagement. This level doesn't require an external audit, but businesses at this level must complete an attestation of compliance (AoC) form.
Level 3
Level 3 businesses that execute 20,000 to 1 million credit card transactions must complete a quarterly self-assessment questionnaire, an ASV, and an AoC.
Level 4
Level 4 businesses that execute fewer than 20,000 credit card transactions are not required to complete an external audit. However, they must submit an annual self-assessment questionnaire, a quarterly ASV, and an AoC form.
Overview of PCI Compliance Requirements
PCI DSS standards focus on protecting customer credit card information. The PCI DSS counsel mandates all credit card companies processing transactions to align to these primary objectives:
Ensure you secure all consumer credit card data during collection and transmission.
Ensure all consumer credit card data is encrypted at rest and transit to prevent unauthorized access.
Perform self-assessments, third-party penetration, and quarterly vulnerability scans; complete application security testing; update all discovered security vulnerabilities; and verify the continuous monitoring and validation of all security and adaptive controls.
Note: Businesses often use different security adaptive controls to comply with the PCI DSS compliance framework. These businesses must ensure that their choice of cybersecurity vendors provides the critical security controls necessary to comply with PCI DSS mandates. The burden of compliance for digital payments falls on the business processing the credit card transactions, not VISA, Mastercard, American Express, or the security firm providing technology controls.
Key Updates in PCI DSS Version 4.0.1 for 2025
Businesses processing credit cards must comply with 4.0.1 standards by March 31, 2025. In addition to changes to the previous control standards, PCI DSS 4.0 approved changes in the following areas.
Customized Approach for Continuous Compliance
Organizations required to meet PCI DSS mandates can now choose how to deploy adaptive controls to meet compliance mandates. This new guideline will benefit established organizations at Levels 1 and 2. These organizations traditionally staff and fund several compliance mandates under one team. Leveraging compliance mandates from NIST 800 52, ISO 27001, and others, these teams can leverage assessments, AoC, and vulnerability results that cover other compliance mandates using similar adaptive controls.
Increase Focus on Vulnerability Management for a Strong Security Posture
PCI DSS version 4.0 expands the requirement for addressing vulnerabilities beyond the critical and high-risk ones mandated in version 3.2.1. Now, all vulnerabilities must be remediated, prioritizing the most crucial. This remediation strategy is essential, as any exploited vulnerability can lead to data breaches affecting cardholder data, security gaps in user authentication, and other potential threats.
Malware and Phishing Prevention Capabilities
To combat ransomware and malware attacks, “PCI DSS v4.0 mandates scanning all removable media devices like USBs and external hard drives for malware when connected or through continuous system scanning.”
Companies must also enable email phishing protection tools against malware and ransomware attacks targeting PCI DSS services and applications. The PCI Security Standards Council encourages the enablement of incident response plans and procedures for email. Security Standards Council encourages enabling incident response plans and procedures for email.
Increasing the Use of Cybersecurity Awareness Training
Version 4 sets more explicit staff training guidelines, requiring security awareness training every 12 months and an annual review of materials to reflect current threats.
The PCI Security Standards Council encourages regular security testing, including attack simulation and security awareness training.
Updating User Authentication to Manage Access Privileges
“PCI DSS v4.0 mandates Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to secure access to Cardholder Data Environments (CDE), reduce the risk of account data compromise, and support social engineering training goals.”
The 12 Foundational Requirements for PCI Compliance 4.0
All businesses governed by PCI DSS must comply with the 12 foundation requirements to meet 4.0 standards.
These requirements include:
Protecting stored cardholder data
Restricting physical access to cardholder data
Robust encryption for cardholder data
Maintaining secure systems and applications
Regularly testing security systems and processes
Keeping antivirus software updated
Installing and maintaining network security controls
Protecting account data against third-party risks
Assigning unique user access IDs
Implementing strong access controls
Managing vulnerabilities by leveraging internal vulnerability scans
Maintaining a secure network perimeter
Businesses enable these standards to help maintain and collect data from their PCI DSS security policies, questionnaires and log files. Organizations that allow these multiple standards must maintain their PCI DSS security policies, questionnaires, and log files for each area.
Before any AI automation, the manual steps used to collect information for the quarterly and annual audits were prone to human error.
Conducting a Gap Analysis for Compliance Readiness
After the company collects the artifacts, it will conduct a gap analysis, including the latest PCI DSS organizational policies, questionnaire content, and data from the 12 requirements.
Like a self-assessment, gap analysis helps the organization find areas within the PCI DSS defense infrastructure, incident response, or policy documentation that could place the company at risk of losing its certification.
Establishing and Maintaining an Information Security Policy
Establishing a company-wide PCI DSS security policy is critical for all organizations to align all internal and external resources and stakeholders. Sustaining PCI DSS takes longer than using the incident response team or risk management. Developing a policy that defines every phase of PCI DSS is essential. The policy becomes the foundation for assisting the organization in ensuring its compliance status with PCI DSS.
The Growth of AI-Automated Compliance Tools
Sustaining a PCI DSS policy is still a manual process. It involves collecting logs, updating the acceptable use policies based on changes to the current PCI DSS level, and ensuring all stakeholders promptly complete the required questionnaires.
AI automation supporting PCI DSS compliance mandates is essential for any credit card processing company. Keeping up with the annual changes to PCI DSS, automating the questionnaire creation and collection process, and collecting artifacts from the 12 requirements are at the core of AI automation.
AI automation for compliance also helps reduce security risks caused by human error, which is a primary cause of many cybersecurity breaches.
Why Tiebreaker AI?
Tiebreaker AI didn't create the AI automation compliance market; it continues to redefine automation tools supporting compliance mandates for startups, small businesses, mid-enterprise, and the global 2000. Tiebreaker AI's approach to delivering a secure, collaborative, with proven automation functionality aligns exceptionally well with the organization's need to reduce compliance auditing costs, stay current with their compliance workflows, and extend the ability to support other compliance mandates in the future with one AI-powered platform.
Is your organization planning to restructure its compliance operations by adding AI-powered automation?
Schedule a demo from the team at Tiebreaker AI and see their PCI DSS, SOC2, and ISO 27001 compliance automation in action.
