The role of SIEM in PCI DSS compliance

Studies have shown a direct correlation between data breaches and non-compliance. This isn't to say that compliant companies never get breached, but to reinforce the importance of incident detection and response. Businesses have begun to realize the devastating consequences of data breaches—their finances and reputation are at stake, so many have been taking steps over the last few years to comply with the PCI DSS. The main goal is often an emphasis on achieving continuous compliance.With that in mind, proactive security monitoring controls have become more important than ever before. Log management is something that IT security experts have stressed for many years, and SIEM solutions have been around for a long time—even before large-scale cyberattacks became commonplace. The PCI DSS has 12 requirements in total, including requirement 10, which talks about implementing a well-defined log monitoring process. Technical measures related to log monitoring features appear in other requirements as well. The objective of these requirements is to make sure organizations are in a position to discover and mitigate threats before becoming victims to them.

For security teams, this effectively boils down to:

  • Reviewing logs on a daily basis (and ideally in near real time)

  • Auditing changes that could jeopardize security

  • Flagging anomalies and suspicious activity

  • Investigating security incidents

  • Ensuring data integrity (including authorized accesses and modifications)

  • Securely archiving collected logs in case they're needed in the future for conducting a forensic investigation
The PCI DSS dives deep into the above requirements and specifies various crucial aspects of log management. This regulation clearly specifies the details that must be recorded from log messages, which events constitute a security incident, the minimum duration for log retention, and more. A cutting-edge SIEM solution is a must for being PCI DSS compliant. Features of a SIEM solution that can help meet the requirements are:

  • Log collection, analysis, and reporting

  • Log archival

  • File integrity monitoring (FIM)

  • User behavior monitoring

  • Change auditing

  • Real-time alerting

  • Threat detection, response, and management (often with the aid of integrations)
Register for our free webinar in which we will dissect the PCI DSS requirements pertaining to log management and discuss how to meet these requirements efficiently by leveraging a SIEM solution.

Topic: The role of SIEM in PCI DSS

Date and time: January 22, 2pm ESTIn the meantime, download our free PCI DSS SIEM guide to learn how ManageEngine Log360 helps meet requirement 10 of the PCI DSS.