PCI DSS Self-Assessment Questionnaires (SAQs) are tools provided by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) to help payment-card-processing merchants and service providers measure their own PCI compliance Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Self-Assessment Questionnaires (SAQs). Which of the nine Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) Self-Assessment Questionnaires (SAQs) your organization needs to fill out and submit depends on several factors.

How to Become PCI DSS Certified The short answer to the question of achieving PCI DSS certification is: you can’t. There is no certificate attesting to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance. There is, however, a way your organization can stand apart as being especially committed to credit card security.

Compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is not easy to achieve. Quite the opposite, in fact: A 2017 Verizon report stated that 80 percent of companies fail their PCI DSS assessments, and only 29 percent of those that pass are still compliant after one year. PCI DSS compliance, like information security as a whole, is not a one-and-done process but ongoing. To succeed, your enterprise must be vigilant.

While every merchant and service provider that processes, stores, or transmits credit card data must comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), not all must travel the same path to PCI compliance. The amount of risk an organization faces depends on a variety of factors. Recognizing these differences, the PCI Security Standards Council developed four compliance levels for merchants and two for service providers.

A PCI audit examines the security of your organization’s credit-card processing system from beginning to end. During this process, a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) or your own Internal Security Assessor will determine the effectiveness of your organization’s information security controls.

Compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and its 281 directives can be a time-consuming hassle. Fortunately, there are ways to minimize your PCI DSS scope, saving time and resources for your organization and auditor, and ratcheting down your stress levels. Larger organizations—those processing more than 1 million credit-card transactions annually—may need two years to reach initial PCI DSS compliance.