Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

PCI DSS compliance is not something you can be flippant about. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is a high bar, and it’s one that is effectively mandatory for any business that wants to accept credit card payments, no matter how little engagement with the systems you have. Any security standard is only as good as its enforcement. PCI strictly enforces its standards because it’s a core foundation of the trust people have in credit cards.

With so many different security frameworks and standards that apply to different industries and businesses, it can be difficult to even know where to begin. Which ones do you need to use, at what levels, and when? Two frameworks in particular are closely related and important for many businesses, and thus are the cause of a lot of confusion. We wanted to address that confusion today. Those two are PCI DSS and SOC 2.

While we talk a lot about governmental cybersecurity here on the Ignyte blog, programs like FedRAMP and CMMC are not the most common kind of security you’re likely to encounter. That honor goes to PCI DSS. PCI DSS is a security framework we all engage with on a near-daily basis. It’s the security framework used around the world to secure payment card information, and it’s extremely important for trust, safety, and the security of customer information.

The first quarter of 2026 is behind us, and that means the next wave of rules, program phases, and other shifts in governmental policy are starting to take effect. One that you may have seen mentioned coming soon is the Consolidated Rules update. What is CR26, when does it take effect, and what does it do? We’ve been eyeing this update for months now, because it makes some very exciting changes, so let’s go through it and see how it will affect the FedRAMP process.

FedRAMP is the information security framework used by the United States government, and it’s required for any cloud service provider hoping to work with the government in a way that handles sensitive information. If you’re a cloud service provider and you want to become FedRAMP-authorized, how do you do it? Unfortunately, this is a more difficult question to answer than a lot of people wish.

Technology changes every year, and one of the biggest shifts over the last decade has been a deep investment into the use of containers. Containers offer a lot of potential benefits, particularly for information security, but they also present serious risks of their own. Those risks can be mitigated, but you need to understand that the problem exists before you can address it.

Depending on the field in which you work, you’ve almost definitely encountered an ISO standard. While these might not seem like they have much to do with one another, the chain that binds them all together is ISO itself. ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, and the 800+ committees that serve as expert boards in different fields, develop international standards to which businesses and organizations can be held.

PCI-DSS is one of the most widely used security frameworks around the world. Unlike frameworks like FedRAMP or CMMC, PCI-DSS is a global security standard, not a standard issued by the US Government. It’s the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, and it’s required for any business or entity that handles cardholder or authentication data. Merchants, payment providers, gateways, banks; they all need it.

One of the core pillars of the security perspective adopted by the Department of Defense is the so-called Zero Trust strategy. This strategy is the adaptation to evolving threats in the world, many of which prey on the presumption of trust from accounts and individuals that can be compromised. To protect controlled unclassified information and other sensitive data, the presumption of zero trust is necessary to eliminate many common threats.

The power of FedRAMP comes from standardization. By setting a firm baseline and forcing cloud service providers to adhere to it if they want to work with the government, a certain mandatory minimum level of security is enforced. A key part of FedRAMP as a security standard is that it’s not a fire-and-forget system. Instead, it involves constant, active vigilance through a process called continuous monitoring.