Introduction

When it comes to payment security, PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is non-negotiable. But maintaining compliance while using cloud systems is like playing Jenga on a wobbly table. Even a small misstep can result in millions in fines and permanent customer distrust.

Several Fortune 500 companies, including Target, Home Depot, and British Airways have suffered massive PCI-related breaches in recent years. Most were using cloud-based payment processing or storage.

PCI-DSS mandates strict segmentation, physical access controls, audit logs, and encryption. Achieving this in a cloud environment is difficult without deep architecture expertise. EXIGENCY builds dedicated payment networks for clients with:

• Air-gapped POS subnets
• Dedicated firewalls with deep packet inspection
• Isolated databases with tokenized encryption

• Home Depot: Hackers gained access to over 50M card numbers by breaching vendor credentials and moving laterally across systems hosted off-site.
• Target: POS malware installed via HVAC vendor access resulted in over $200M in damages.
• British Airways: 500,000 cardholder details stolen through a cloud-script exploit, resulting in a GDPR fine of £183M.

These breaches show that third-party cloud reliance creates indirect vulnerabilities.

Logging requirements under PCI-DSS must be tamper-proof, synchronized, and retained for 12 months. Cloud platforms may offer logs but many are editable or incomplete. EXIGENCY logs are:

• Immutable
• Time-synchronized across NTP servers
• Retained on encrypted, air-gapped NAS appliances

PCI-DSS compliance isn’t just a checkbox, it’s a commitment. Cloud vendors may claim to be “PCI-ready,” but they’re not responsible for your compliance. With EXIGENCY, you control the full stack, from terminal to tokenization. Your data, your environment, your compliance.

• PCI SSC
• FTC: Target and Home Depot Breach Cases