PCI Assessments Center
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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.
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.
Live payment-security signals curated from public industry sources. Refreshed every few hours — nothing here is a PCI Assessments Center incident.
An AppSec team can point an AI agent running on a general-purpose model at its own web apps with little setup. Sure, the model writes the attacks. But everything that makes those attacks safe to run against production and worth acting on a…
Attackers took control of more than 300 Tor exit relays in early October and used them to redirect SSH connections to servers that stole login passwords, a researcher found. Exit relays are the last hop in a Tor circuit, where traffic leav…
OpenAI has revealed that two artificial intelligence (AI) agents powered by GPT-6.1 Sol and one GPT-6 Astra weakened misalignment monitoring while making requested software changes during two internal coding tasks. The AI company said the…
PHP has released emergency updates that fix two critical flaws in the language itself, letting an attacker without an account run code on a web server. The fixes are in PHP 8.5.12, 8.4.27, 8.3.36 and 8.2.35, and the PHP team says only upda…
Google on Tuesday said it's rolling out improved safeguards in its Chrome browser to secure users against ClickFix attacks when Enhanced Protection is enabled. ClickFix is a popular social engineering technique in which bad actors trick us…
The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) on Tuesday added four vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, including four vulnerabilities impacting Plex Media Server that's collectively cal…
A Belarus-aligned hacktivist group spent nearly two years within the network of a Russian healthcare organization. According to a report published by Russian cybersecurity firm Solar, the activity has been attributed to a threat cluster du…
This story is developing and was written before PHP's scheduled 14:00 UTC release on October 21. Once the release is out, the affected and fixed versions below are confirmed by the official advisory. PHP will ship an out-of-cycle security…
Expect to see quite a few websites serving "404" or "Page Not Found" errors today: Nearly 70 percent of websites need to update their core software to fix a pair of vulnerabilities that allow an attacker to seize full control over affected…
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a previously undocumented China-aligned threat cluster known as Bronze Sandcastle that has been observed targeting organizations in Asia and Africa since mid-2025. "The most distinctive t…
Generative AI has changed what a malicious email looks like. Messages that once gave themselves away through clumsy wording, generic pretexts, and reused templates now arrive fluent, personalized, and unique to each recipient, and the beha…
You cannot fully block the two critical PHP flaws called PHP2Shell before today's fix, and the one setting being passed around as a workaround is not enough on its own, the security firm that suggested it now says. PHP will release the fix…
Unknown threat actors breached TeamUpdraft's website and potentially gained unauthorized access to customers' connection keys for UpdraftCentral, UpdraftVault, and UpdraftClone, using them to backdoor WordPress sites. TeamUpdraft is the de…
U.S. federal civilian agencies must remove DeepSeek products from their information technology systems, along with any third-party products or services "developed using DeepSeek implementations," under a Department of Homeland Security ord…
State Bank of India has identified 3,897 customer records containing personal information in a set of about 375,000 records available on the dark web, and it does not yet know where the data came from. The state-owned bank, India's largest…
Siemens has addressed a DLL sideloading vulnerability impacting Siemens Software Center that it said has been exploited in ClickFix attacks. The high-severity vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-110936 (CVSS v4 score: 8.4), could allow an a…
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of a ClickFix delivery platform called ROMULUS that's being used to distribute malware such as Legion Loader. According to Forescout Research - Vedere Labs, ROMULUS is akin to a malware deli…
Cybersecurity researchers have released a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for a recently patched critical security flaw impacting Fortinet FortiSIEM that could result in arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2026-10617…
Palo Alto Networks has disclosed that it's continuing to observe exploitation of a now-patched security flaw impacting PAN-OS and Prisma Access by ransomware actors. The activity relates to CVE-2026-0257 (CVSS score: 7.8), an authenticatio…
The iPhone of Vladan Đokić, rector of the University of Belgrade and a prominent supporter of Serbia's student protest movement, was infected with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware in 2026, the Citizen Lab said on October 19. The finding came si…
An attacker used a contributor's GitHub account to replace the download archives on five existing releases of OVHcloud's command-line tool on Monday, October 19. The account had been hijacked, and the new files were a build designed to ste…
A U.S. court on Monday granted the U.S. government's request to detain a former OpenAI engineer accused of planting a recording device in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco office to allegedly steal sensitive secre…
The private keys of eight eMudhra intermediate certificate authority (CA) certificates are compromised, Mozilla and Google's Chrome Root Program confirms on October 20. An intermediate CA signs the certificates that websites present, so an…
A Chinese-speaking criminal pointed autonomous AI agents at company websites and let them break in with almost no help, and a security researcher watched it happen because the operators left their control panels open on the internet. The a…
Every step is grounded in the PCI SSC v4.0.1 SAQ Instructions and Guidelines. No guesswork, no smaller SAQ than your scope allows.
Find the right assessment for your organisation.
Confirm official SAQ eligibility criteria.
Answer the correct SAQ with QSA guidance.
Turn every gap into a remediation plan and a scored risk register — free.
Review results online or engage a QSA to sign.
Prepare your team for PCI certification exams with QSA-authored practice materials.
Selected requirements the platform highlights during your assessment. Click through the deck or wait for it to rotate.
Multi-factor authentication is now required for all access into the Cardholder Data Environment, not just administrative access.
Start free with a self-assessment or training. Bring in a QSA when the payment brand or acquirer asks for a signature.
Structured PCI DSS eligibility check covering all 10 official PCI DSS v4.0.1 SAQs. Results are available online in your workspace.
Course tracks for PCIP and PCI QSA — lessons, quizzes, and readiness checklists, authored by practising QSAs.
When you need a signed SAQ, an Attestation of Compliance, or a Report on Compliance, a Haumaru Whānau QSA takes it from here.
Curated PCI SSC references we use ourselves when validating assessments.
Official PCI DSS v4.0.1 standard, SAQs, AoCs and supporting guidance.
OpenThe authoritative decision guide behind our fail-closed SAQ selector.
OpenMilestone-based path to reduce the highest risks first.
OpenCouncil-maintained answers to common interpretation questions.
OpenFoundational credential for security teams working with PCI DSS.
OpenRequirements to become and remain a Qualified Security Assessor.
OpenYes. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.