Achieving PCI Compliance with Cloudsmith

What is PCI Compliance?

    Global Security Standards
    PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is a global framework of security standards designed to ensure that any organization handling credit card information does so in a safe and secure way. It was created by major credit card companies including Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and JCB to combat the threat of fraud and data breaches in the payments industry.
    Decisive Anti-Fraud Measures
    Introduced in the early 2000s, PCI DSS emerged to bring consistency and clarity to an otherwise fragmented security landscape. At its core, it aims to stop fraud before it starts by establishing clear and enforceable requirements for anyone who stores, processes, or transmits cardholder data.

Why is PCI Compliance Important?

    Best Practice
    PCI compliance is both a best practice and sometimes a contractual obligation with financial processing services for any business handling cardholder data. Falling short can lead to serious consequences, including fines, damage to your reputation, and the loss of payment processing capabilities.
    A Serious Commitment to Security
    PCI compliance also strengthens your overall security posture. It protects sensitive customer data and reduces exposure to cyberattacks. Meeting these standards signals to customers, partners and regulators that you take security seriously and are committed to operating with integrity. It builds trust, especially in sectors like finance, healthcare and e-commerce.

Key Requirements of PCI

The PCI DSS framework outlines a comprehensive set of controls designed to secure cardholder data and reduce the risk of breaches.

    Build and maintain a secure network and systems
    Installing and maintain firewalls and secure configurations across all systems.
    Protect cardholder data
    Use encryption both in transit and at rest, and ensure all storage methods are secure.
    Maintain a vulnerability management program
    Include regular use of anti-virus software and secure development practices.
    Implement strong access control measures
    Limit data access strictly to those with a business need to know.
    Monitor and test networks
    Tracking all access to systems and cardholder data and performing regular security testing.
    Maintain an information security policy
    One that is established, maintained, and followed by all personnel.

How Cloudsmith Supports PCI Compliance

Cloudsmith is not itself a PCI DSS certified entity, since we do not store, process, or transmit cardholder data. Our platform is built with strong security controls, and is ISO 27001 certified. These controls, combined with Cloudsmith’s cloud-native architecture and DevSecOps features, support your PCI DSS compliance efforts.

Our platform helps you satisfy PCI DSS requirements across access control, malware prevention, vulnerability management, data protection, and audit readiness.

BUILT FOR COMPLIANCE

Focus Areas Where Cloudsmith Supports PCI DSS Compliance

PCI DSS is defined by a set of security requirements that organizations must meet to protect cardholder data. Cloudsmith supports a number of critical PCI DSS focus areas across your software supply chain.

  1. Cloudsmith delivers your software with security and integrity at its core. Cryptographically verifiable artifacts and immutable delivery pipelines ensure your components are trusted from source to production.

    • Artifact Provenance: Packages are cryptographically signed at publish and can be verified to ensure integrity.
    • Vulnerability Management: Cloudsmith scans packages using multiple vulnerability data sources (including NVD and GitHub Advisory DB), and stores the scan results as metadata visible to your developers, your policy workflows, and your integrations.
    • Policy Enforcement: Cloudsmith's Enterprise Policy Management (EPM), built on Open Policy Agent (OPA), allows the creation of flexible, auditable policies for controlling package usage.
    • Audit of Open Source Dependencies: Cloudsmith provides visibility into all open-source dependencies pulled from public repositories (e.g., PyPI, Maven Central, Docker Hub, npm) using upstreams. SBOMs are automatically generated for container images and can be exported to support inventory and compliance requirements.

  2. Cloudsmith helps enforce access control based on least privilege and secure identity verification.

    • RBAC: Role-based access control at the organization level, with user/team-level repository privileges.
    • OIDC and Token Authentication: Secure service access using short-lived OIDC tokens.
    • SSO & SCIM Support: Integrate with identity providers for centralized user authentication and lifecycle automation.
    • Access Controls: Private repositories, entitlement tokens, and fine-grained permissions enable secure and controlled access to artifacts.

  3. Cloudsmith ensures data is protected through robust encryption and logging.

    • Encryption in Transit and at Rest: TLS 1.2+ and AES-256 encryption ensure data protection during transmission and storage.
    • Audit Trails: Extensive logging of user/system activity supports compliance and integrates with existing observability tools.

  4. Built-in scanning and quarantine to stop malware at the gate with policy-driven control.

    • Malware Scanning: Artifacts are scanned on upload. Packages with known vulnerabilities are blocked and prevented from distribution.
    • Policy Violations: Vulnerability and license policy violations can trigger automated quarantine workflows blocking packages from being downloaded, promoted or deployed to infrastructure.

  5. Cloudsmith is built for uptime, with infrastructure designed for high availability.

    • Cloud-Native Architecture: Globally distributed infrastructure and built-in redundancy ensure high availability and reliability, backed by a dedicated 24x7 infrastructure monitoring team.
    • Service Commitments: SLA-backed core services provide reliability assurance. See SLA details.

  6. Deep insight into activity across your repositories and packages.

    • Logging: Detailed logs across organization, repository, package, and client, accessible via API or export.
    • Observability Integrations: Integrates with external platforms for visibility using log analysis, alerting, and monitoring.
    • Alerting: Webhooks enable push-based notifications for key package events.
Find out how Cloudsmith helps organizations meet and maintain PCI compliance