Exam CISSP Topic 2 Question 983 Discussion

Requirement 3 of the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is to "protect stored cardholder data." The public assumes merchants and financial institutions will protect data on payment cards to thwart theft and prevent unauthorized use.
But merchants should take note: Requirement 3 applies only if cardholder data is stored. Merchants who do not store any cardholder data automatically provide stronger protection by having eliminated a key target for data thieves.
For merchants who have a legitimate business reason to store cardholder data, it is important to understand what data elements PCI DSS allows them to store and what measures they must take to protect those data. To prevent unauthorized storage, only council certified PIN entry devices and payment applications may be used.
PCI DSS compliance is enforced by the major payment card brands who established the PCI DSS and the PCI Security Standards Council: American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa Inc.
PCI DSS Requirement 3 It details technical guidelines for protecting stored cardholder data. Merchants should develop a data retention and storage policy that strictly limits storage amount and retention time to that which is required for business, legal, and/or regulatory purposes.
Sensitive authentication data must never be stored after authorization - even if this data is encrypted.
Never store full contents of any track from the card's magnetic stripe or chip (referred to as full track, track, track 1, track 2, or magnetic stripe data). If required for business purposes, the cardholder's name, PAN, expiration date, and service code may be stored as long as they are
rotected in accordance with PCI DSS requirements.
Never store the card-validation code (CVV) or value (three- or four-digit number printed on the front or back of a payment card used to validate card-not-present transactions).
Never store the personal identification number (PIN) or PIN Block. Be sure to mask PAN whenever it is displayed. The first six and last four digits are the maximum number of digits that may be displayed. This requirement does not apply to those authorized with a specific need to see the full PAN, nor does it supersede stricter requirements in place for displays of cardholder data such as in a point-of-sale receipt.
PCI Data Storage
[1] These data elements must be protected if stored in conjunction with the PAN. This protection should be per PCI DSS requirements for general protection of the cardholder data environment. Additionally, other legislation (e.g., related to consumer personal data protection, privacy, identity theft, or data security) may require specific protection of this data, or proper disclosure of a company's practices if consumer related personal data is being collected during the course of business. PCI DSS, however, does not apply if PANs are not stored, processed, or transmitted.
[2] Sensitive authentication data must not be stored after authorization (even if encrypted).
[3] Full track data from the magnetic stripe, magnetic stripe image on the chip, or elsewhere.
Technical Guidelines for Protecting Stored Payment Card Data At a minimum, PCI DSS requires PAN to be rendered unreadable anywhere it is stored - including portable digital media, backup media, and in logs. Software solutions for this requirement may include one of the following:
One-way hash functions based on strong cryptography - also called hashed index, which displays only index data that point to records in the database where sensitive data actually reside.
Truncation - removing a data segment, such as showing only the last four digits.
Index tokens and securely stored pads - encryption algorithm that combines sensitive plain text data with a random key or "pad" that works only once.
Strong cryptography - with associated key management processes and procedures. Refer to the PCI DSS and PA-DSS Glossary of Terms, Abbreviations and Acronyms for the definition of "strong cryptography."
Some cryptography solutions encrypt specific fields of information stored in a database; others encrypt a singular file or even the entire disk where data is stored. If full-disk encryption is used, logical access must be managed independently of native operating system access control mechanisms. Decryption keys must not be tied to user accounts. Encryption keys used for encryption of cardholder data must be protected against both disclosure and misuse. All key management processes and procedures for keys used for encryption of cardholder data must be fully documented and implemented. Strong Cryptography is define in the glossary of PCI DSS as: Cryptography based on industry-tested and accepted algorithms, along with strong key lengths and proper key-management practices. Cryptography is a method to protect data and includes both encryption (which is reversible) and hashing (which is not reversible, or "one way"). Examples of industry-tested and accepted standards and algorithms for encryption include AES (128 bits and higher), TDES (minimum double-length keys), RSA (1024 bits and higher), ECC (160 bits and higher), and ElGamal (1024 bits and higher).
See NIST Special Publication 800-57 (www.csrc.nist.gov/publications/) for more information on strong crypto.
The following answers are all incorrect: Primary Account Number Cardholder Name Expiration Date All of the items above can be stored according to the PCI Data Storage Guidelines. See graphic above.
The following reference(s) were/was used to create this question: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/pci_fs_data_storage.pdf