James Bond can jump from a moving car onto a speeding freight train in one well-timed leap. Your Assessment firm will have to figure out how it’s going to do the same thing with your clients that are running on PCI 3.2.1. The end of Interstate 3.2.1 is coming, and you’ll need to get them all safely onto the 4.0 train.
When PCI 4.0 is officially released, Assessment firms everywhere will be scrambling to understand and master the new compliance standard, and to tool up to assimilate it into their client engagement systems and processes. For most firms, it will be a herculean effort that will take months (or longer) to roll out.
But some firms will discover how to make the transition quick and seamless — for themselves, and for their clients.
The greatest challenge for your Assessment firm will be to manage your clients while ramping up your PCI compliance software to version 4.0. You’ll need to consider the impacts of retooling your software, managing clients, dealing with inefficient engagements, and mitigating the (very) expensive costs associated with those impacts.
On the other hand, Assessment firms that use TCT Portal compliance software will experience very little disruption at the rollout of PCI 4.0 — saving time, money, and frustration, as well as outperforming the competition.
Let’s take a look at the difference TCT Portal will make with the v4.0 release.
Related reading: PCI 4.0 Is Coming — Here’s What to Expect
Retooling Your PCI Compliance Software
Whether you’re using spreadsheets and dropzones or a homegrown internally developed compliance tracking system, you’ll have your work cut out for you to retool for PCI DSS 4.0.
Retooling will mean completely reformatting your spreadsheets or your database. You’ll need to comb through every single line item of v4.0 and compare it with PCI 3.2.1 — noting every change and making sure you’re interpreting it correctly.
Overhauling your homegrown compliance management software will involve pulling your developers from their core responsibilities to rewrite the system — a project that could take a year or more to complete. It’s an expensive, onerous, and time consuming task.
If you are already on TCT Portal, or switch to TCT Portal, you won’t have to do any retooling for PCI 4.0, because TCT will do the heavy lifting of configuration of the new standard. All of the mappings from 3.2.1 to 4.0 will be automatically implemented for you. Migrating your data from a 3.2.1 track to the 4.0 will be very straightforward, and we’ll help you with any unique needs you might have.
You’ll also be surprised how quickly you’ll be able to introduce PCI 4.0 to your clients. While other Assessment firms are busy retooling their systems, you’ll already be running engagements on TCT Portal.
Serving Your Clients
Retooling your homegrown PCI management system is going to impact your service to clients. Retool quickly, and you’re pulling virtually all of your attention away from clients — as well as running at higher risk of problems due to the compressed timeframe. Take your time, and you’ll have less of a negative impact operationally, but the impact will be drawn out over a long period of time.
TCT Portal gives you the tools to provide the best and most personalized client service during the transition to PCI 4.0. You’ll be able to offer v4.0 quickly — before most of your competitors — and without diverting your attention from client work.
You’ll also be able to give clients flexible options for the transition. Both PCI 3.2.1 and PCI 4.0 will be viable until 2025, which gives your clients a number of different approaches to their transition.
- One new engagement wants to start with 3.2.1, even after 4.0 is released.
- Another new engagement wants to jump right into 4.0.
- An existing client wants to switch from 3.2.1 over to 4.0 immediately, in the midst of their current cycle.
- Others want to finish the current cycle, then cleanly switch to 4.0.
- Some decide to finish the current cycle, go one more year under 3.2.1, then switch.
TCT Portal gives you the flexibility to offer each of your clients the transition option of their choice. Switch to PCI 4.0 any time with the help of the stellar TCT Support team. All of the evidence your clients have submitted will automatically get mapped over to the new framework. You don’t have to do a thing.
Running Efficient Engagements
Every time a new version of a standard comes out, there’s a period of unfamiliarity. You’re treading more cautiously through your client engagements, checking and rechecking the new standard, referring to guidance on this or that requirement, consulting with colleagues over unique scenarios. It slows you down, and client engagements run a lot more inefficiently.
It’ll be months before you can cruise through a PCI 4.0 engagement, and by that time you’ll be backlogged so far that it’ll take a couple more months to dig yourself out of it.
TCT can’t eliminate the entire learning curve on PCI 4.0, but our compliance software puts all of your evidence, guidance, and other reference materials in one central location. TCT Portal makes it much more efficient to run an engagement while familiarizing yourself with the new standard. Guidance is automatically mapped to every requirement, making it easy to interpret each line item.
It will take everyone some time to get accustomed to PCI 4.0. The advantage for Assessors using TCT Portal is that you can go in on Day One and do meaningful work in the standard.
Financial Impacts
Time is money. There’s a price you’re paying for every hour that someone is manually sifting through all of the line item changes, figuring out how to retool your PCI management system, performing analyses, and planning the roll out of your changes. That’s time those resources should be spending on adding value to the business and doing billable work.
TCT can handle all of that effort for you, so you can keep doing the work that makes your business profitable. Shortly after PCI DSS is rolled out, TCT Portal will be updated with a ready-to-go option for PCI 4.0.
On that day, TCT Portal could save your business thousands of dollars in internal costs. That’s in addition to the thousands of dollars the PCI compliance software saves an average Assessment firm in a typical year.
Discover the annual ROI of TCT Portal for Assessment firms.
Transition to PCI 4.0 Expediently
TCT Portal is the most complete software tool available for managing and tracking PCI DSS and all of your other industry standard certifications. We stand out from the crowd, because we aren’t a software company that built a compliance management tool — we’re a compliance company that understands the needs and daily life of Assessment firms. And we built a tool to address those needs.
Make your transition to PCI DSS 4.0 quicker and easier, for your firm and for your clients. See a demo of TCT Portal today.
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