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PCI Assessments Center

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PCiPCI Assessments Center
Kaitiaki, AI PCI ISA

Meet Kaitiaki — your Internal Security Assessor

Grounded in the PCI SSC library for PCI DSS v4.0.1 — ask about scoping, SAQ eligibility, evidence or your own gaps.

Your PCI assessment workspace.

Determine the right SAQ, complete it online against PCI DSS v4.0.1, and prepare your teams for PCIP and QSA — in one guided workspace.

10 official SAQs · PCI SSC-aligned · Free forever
PCI Assessments
Content Card · Platinum
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Questions
189 domains
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SAQs
v4.0.1 aligned
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Controls
across 11 SAQs
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Courses
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Flashcards
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Exam Tracks
AWARENESS · DEVELOPERS · +7
Valid Thru
PCI DSS · v4.0.1
Issued By
Haumaru Whānau · QSA
10 official SAQs
All PCI DSS v4.0.1 SAQs supported verbatim.
Verified email signup
Email code verification with disposable-domain blocking.
RLS-protected data
Every assessment isolated by tenant and role.
QSA-authored content
Built by Haumaru Whānau PCI QSA professionals.
Independent practice
Preparation for official PCIP and QSA exams.
Free self-assessment
Determine, attest and complete at no cost.
Threat watch

Why compliance posture matters

Live payment-security signals curated from public industry sources. Refreshed every few hours — nothing here is a PCI Assessments Center incident.

Threat1 day ago

Attackers Hijack Dahua IP Cameras in Ukraine Using P2P Access and Auth Weaknesses

The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has issued an alert warning of unauthorized remote access to video surveillance systems manufactured by Dahua. "Cases of compromising IP cameras and DVRs with access to the video st…

The Hacker NewsRead
Regulation1 day ago

GoAhead TLS Flaws Allow Revoked Client Certificates and Enable Session Decryption

The GoAhead embedded web server loaded a certificate revocation list into its default TLS backend but never turned revocation checking on, so a revoked client certificate could still pass login on affected setups. The flaw is in builds tha…

The Hacker NewsRead
Regulation1 day ago

Microsoft Authenticator Flaw Let Permissionless Android Apps Steal Work Account Tokens

Microsoft has fixed a flaw in its Authenticator app for Android that let a malicious app with no permissions pose as a trusted Microsoft app, such as Teams, and collect sign-in tokens for a victim's work account. Microsoft tracks the flaw…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat1 day ago

AI-Generated Fake Login Pages Are Making Account Takeovers Easier

Fake login pages are nothing new, but generative AI is making them easier to build and more convincing. Attackers can recreate familiar login screens, impersonate trusted brands and tailor phishing attempts to specific employees or organiz…

The Hacker NewsRead
Regulation1 day ago

OpenAI Compaction Flaw Let Researchers Bypass Hidden Reasoning Protections

OpenAI's compaction feature, which shrinks a long conversation to save space, could be turned into a way to copy a model's hidden reasoning out in plain text, security firm Xint has shown. OpenAI's reasoning models work through a problem b…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat1 day ago

CyberStrikeAI Uses 44 AI Agents to Automate Hacking Operations Against Japan Targets

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of three cyber attacks targeting organizations in Japan in which artificial intelligence (AI) was a key element, either in the driving seat or to assist a human operator. TrendAI, which anal…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat1 day ago

Apple Backports Fix for Exploited CoreGraphics Flaw to Older iPhones and iPads

Apple on Monday backported fixes for a high-severity security flaw that was exploited in real-world cyber attacks to older devices. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-86950 (CVSS score: 8.8), is an out-of-bounds write affecting CoreGra…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat1 day ago

Keystone to Destroy 18,835 Hardware Wallets After Hackers Steal Device Verification Key

An attacker who gained access to Keystone's website obtained the key that its hardware wallets use to prove they are genuine, the company said in a statement on October 26. Someone with that key could build counterfeit devices that pass th…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat1 day ago

Lazarus Abuses South Korean Security Software to Deploy Malware Using Post-Quantum Encryption

The North Korea-linked Lazarus Group has been attributed to a cyber espionage campaign dubbed Operation FlashHole targeting at least three organizations in South Korea spanning the construction, software, and wire-communication equipment m…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat1 day ago

Australia Gets Into Amadey Malware Backend, Cuts Off Access to 180,000 Infected Computers

A criminal using the Amadey malware can no longer access or steal data from 180,000 infected computers around the world, including some in Australia, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) says. The agency's operators gained access to th…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat1 day ago

CISA Confirms Active Exploitation of Two PHP2Shell Flaws Enabling Remote Code Execution

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Monday confirmed active exploitation of the recently patched PHP2Shell flaws by adding them to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. The PHP vulnerabilities,…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat2 days ago

Between alerts: What Attackers Do in the Spaces Ordinary Detection Misses

Every SOC struggles with a pile of alerts. Very few of those alerts explain how an attack started or how it progressed. Network data, like that from a network detection and response (NDR) platform, connects individual alerts into one timel…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat2 days ago

uCreator Android Spyware Can Steal Telegram 2FA Passwords and Clone WeChat Accounts

A rentable Android spyware kit called uCreator takes over Telegram and WeChat accounts by hiding its code inside working copies of the two apps, researcher Ovi found. It only reaches people who install one of these tampered copies, spread…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat2 days ago

Microsoft 365 Token-Replay Attacks Compromise 97 Accounts at 79 Organizations

Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed a Microsoft 365 campaign that has been observed leveraging an adversary-in-the-middle (AitM) relay to capture sign-in sessions and then replay the stolen tokens to break into email accounts at 79 or…

The Hacker NewsRead
Breach2 days ago

Gheist Uses Stolen GitHub Tokens to Steal Private Repository Secrets via Actions Logs

An automated campaign is using stolen GitHub tokens to plant workflows that print a repository's secrets into its GitHub Actions logs, which the attackers then download before deleting the runs. The attacks have succeeded in private reposi…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat2 days ago

Malicious File in Downloads Folder Tries to Trick AI Coding Agent Into Installing Malware

A malicious instruction file sitting in a developer's Downloads folder tried to make their AI coding agent install a known-malicious npm package, security firm Forever Security said in a report published last week. The company caught the a…

The Hacker NewsRead
Regulation2 days ago

PHP Issues Second Windows Security Update in Five Days to Fix Brotli Code Execution Flaw

PHP has rebuilt its official Windows packages for PHP 8.2 through 8.5 to fix CVE-2026-111497, a flaw in the Brotli compression library that the packages include. The flaw can let an attacker corrupt memory and potentially run code. PHP say…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat2 days ago

Attackers Use Microsoft Teams IT Support Scams to Deploy Malware and Ransomware

Cybersecurity researchers are calling attention to what they say is a "recurring social engineering pattern" across hundreds of cases in which threat actors use Microsoft Teams' external chat creation feature to conduct impersonation scams…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat2 days ago

⚡ Weekly Recap: This2Shell, That2Shell, Everything's an RCE? Rogue AI, Supply Chain Chaos and More

This2Shell, That2Shell, Everything2Shell. That's pretty much how the last week went. Critical bugs that let attackers run code remotely are showing up everywhere. Hackers are scanning for targets, some flaws are already being used in attac…

The Hacker NewsRead
Regulation2 days ago

Two Critical Wasmtime Flaws Could Let Malicious WebAssembly Modules Escape Sandboxes

Two critical flaws in Wasmtime, a WebAssembly runtime that can be built into other software, could allow a malicious WebAssembly module to escape the sandbox intended to contain it, the project's maintainers say. An attacker would first ne…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat2 days ago

Hackers Infect 953 Online Stores With Scanner-Evading JavaScript, Mostly on Magento

An unknown threat actor has infected 953 online stores, most of them running Magento, as part of a long-running campaign active since July 2025. According to Dutch e-commerce security company Sansec, the activity is designed to add a small…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat3 days ago

OpenAI AI Agents Demonstrate VM Escapes and Secret Cross-Sandbox Communication

OpenAI has announced plans to conduct frontier model training with no live internet access, as it resumes reinforcement learning (RL) training and internal inference of its most advanced AI models. "Based on the current state of alignment…

The Hacker NewsRead
Regulation3 days ago

Unpatched Tailscale SSH Flaws Could Let a Hacked Device Reach Root on Other Servers

A single hacked device on a Tailscale network can be used to gain root access to other servers it can reach, according to a security researcher who published the findings this week. The attack requires two things: Tailscale SSH set up to a…

The Hacker NewsRead
Threat3 days ago

PHP2Shell Exploitation Attempts Continue Amid Suspected N. Korea Global Scanning Activity

In an update, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said it's retracting its earlier assessment that the post-compromise activity targeting the European government agency involved the exploitation of the PHP2Shell flaws. "What researchers saw was an…

The Hacker NewsRead
The path

From "which SAQ?" to "we're ready"

Every step is grounded in the PCI SSC v4.0.1 SAQ Instructions and Guidelines. No guesswork, no smaller SAQ than your scope allows.

1
Determine

Find the right assessment for your organisation.

2
Attest

Confirm official SAQ eligibility criteria.

3
Complete

Answer the correct SAQ with QSA guidance.

4
Plan with your AI PCI ISA

Turn every gap into a remediation plan and a scored risk register — free.

5
Validate

Review results online or engage a QSA to sign.

6
Train

Prepare your team for PCI certification exams with QSA-authored practice materials.

PCI DSS v4.0.1

What changed — and what you must plan for

Selected requirements the platform highlights during your assessment. Click through the deck or wait for it to rotate.

In effectReq 8.4

MFA for all access into the CDE

Multi-factor authentication is now required for all access into the Cardholder Data Environment, not just administrative access.

Offerings

Three doors, one path

Start free with a self-assessment or training. Bring in a QSA when the payment brand or acquirer asks for a signature.

Assessment
Self-Assessment

Structured PCI DSS eligibility check covering all 10 official PCI DSS v4.0.1 SAQs. Results are available online in your workspace.

  • Fail-closed eligibility mirrors PCI SSC decision tree
  • Verbatim controls with expected testing
  • Online results — no downloads
  • Per-tenant secure storage
Create a free account
Courses
PCIP & QSA readiness

Course tracks for PCIP and PCI QSA — lessons, quizzes, and readiness checklists, authored by practising QSAs.

  • PCIP fundamentals course
  • PCI QSA readiness course
  • QSA-authored lessons
  • Free for every organisation
  • Independent practice material — not official PCI SSC exams
Explore courses
QSA Services
Formal SAQ, AoC & ROC

When you need a signed SAQ, an Attestation of Compliance, or a Report on Compliance, a Haumaru Whānau QSA takes it from here.

  • Formal SAQ + Attestation of Compliance
  • ROC readiness & QSA-assisted assessments
  • Remediation sprints
  • Annual QSA retainer
Explore QSA services
Who it's for

Built for every side of PCI

FAQ

Frequently asked

Is the platform really free?+

Yes. Self-assessments and every training module on PCI Assessments Center are free. There is no credit card, trial or paywall. Only formal QSA engagements — signed SAQ, Attestation of Compliance, ROC readiness, remediation, and retainers — are paid, and they are quoted individually.

Do I need to create an account?+

Yes. A free account is required so your self-assessments and responses stay tied to your organisation. Each account belongs to a tenant, and row-level security ensures only members of your organisation can read your data.

Which SAQs are supported?+

All 10 official PCI DSS v4.0.1 SAQs: A, A-EP, B, B-IP, C, C-VT, D-Merchant, D for Service Providers, P2PE, and SPoC. The guided selector uses the PCI SSC v4.0.1 SAQ Instructions to determine which SAQ applies to your environment, and requires you to attest the official eligibility criteria before you start.

How does PCI Assessments Center choose the right SAQ for me?+

A fail-closed decision engine walks you through the PCI SSC v4.0.1 SAQ Instructions and Guidelines. Every question and eligibility check cites its source. If any short-form SAQ criterion is not met, the engine routes you to SAQ D or to a QSA — never a smaller SAQ than your scope allows.

What do I get at the end of a self-assessment?+

A structured online result in your workspace: the correct SAQ for your scope, your eligibility attestation, the full selection rationale with citations, and your recorded responses. Results are online-only — there are no downloadable PDFs.

Why can't I download a PDF of my SAQ or AoC?+

A downloadable SAQ or Attestation of Compliance implies formal validation. To keep that distinction clear, PCI Assessments Center only shows self-assessment results online. When you need a signed SAQ or AoC, request a formal engagement from QSA Services and a Haumaru Whānau QSA will issue it.

Can PCI Assessments Center replace a formal QSA engagement?+

No. Self-assessments here are for readiness, scoping, and internal use. If your acquirer, payment brand, or a contract requires a signed SAQ, Attestation of Compliance, or Report on Compliance, request a formal engagement on the QSA Services page.

When do I need a QSA instead of a self-assessment?+

You need a QSA if you are a PCI DSS Level 1 merchant or service provider, if your acquirer or brand mandates a Report on Compliance, if you have been designated for Designated Entities Supplemental Validation, or if you have had a recent card data breach. The guided selector flags these cases and routes you to QSA Services.

How much do formal QSA engagements cost?+

Every engagement is scoped and quoted individually — complexity, environment size, evidence maturity, and geography all affect effort. Submit a request from QSA Services; a QSA will schedule a scoping call and follow up with a written quote.

How secure is my data?+

Every table uses per-tenant row-level security, so only members of your organisation can read or write your data. Authentication runs on managed cloud infrastructure with sessions scoped per tenant.

Who is behind PCI Assessments Center?+

Haumaru Whānau, a certified PCI QSA Company. Self-assessments and training remain free; formal QSA services are delivered by Haumaru Whānau QSAs and quoted separately.

Are the PCIP and QSA exams official PCI SSC exams?+

No. The PCIP-style and QSA-style exams on PCI Assessments Center are independent practice and preparation exams created by Haumaru Whānau QSAs. They are not endorsed by, affiliated with, or a substitute for the official PCI Security Standards Council PCIP or QSA qualification exams.