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Payment Card Industry (PCI) on GCP

GCP adheres to the PCI DSS requirements set forth for a level 1 Service Provider. GCP is required to be compliant with PCI DSS and all applicable requirements that directly apply to a service provider.

As of Nov 11, 2020 here is the list of 93 GCP services that ARE in scope for PCI DSS:

Access Approval
Access Context Manager
Access Transparency
Apigee Edge
AI Platform Data Labeling
AI Platform Notebooks
AI Platform Training and Prediction
App Engine
AutoML Natural Language
AutoML Tables
AutoML Translation
AutoML Video
AutoML Vision
BigQuery
BigQuery Data Transfer Service
Cloud Asset Inventory
Cloud Bigtable
Cloud Billing API
Cloud Build
Cloud CDN
Cloud Composer
Cloud Console
Cloud Console App
Cloud Data Fusion
Cloud Data Loss Prevention
Cloud Deployment Manager
Cloud DNS
Cloud Endpoints
Cloud Filestore
Cloud Functions
Cloud Healthcare
Cloud HSM
Cloud Interconnect
Cloud Key Management Service
Cloud Life Sciences (formerly Google Genomics)
Cloud Load Balancing
Cloud NAT (Network Address Translation)
Cloud Natural Language API
Cloud Router
Cloud Run (fully managed)
Cloud Run for Anthos
Cloud SDK
Cloud Shell
Cloud Source Repositories
Cloud Spanner
Cloud SQL
Cloud Storage
Cloud Translation
Cloud Vision
Cloud VPN
Compute Engine
Container Registry
Data Catalog
Dataflow
Datalab
Dataproc
Datastore
Dialogflow
Event Threat Detection
Firestore
GCP Marketplace
GKE Hub
Google Cloud Armor
Google Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy
Google Kubernetes Engine
Identity and Access Management (IAM)
Identity Platform
IoT Core
Managed Service for Microsoft Active Directory (AD)
Memorystore
Network Service Tiers
Orbitera
Persistent Disk
Pub/Sub
Resource Manager API
Security Command Center
Service Consumer Management
Service Control
Service Management
Speech-to-Text
Stackdriver Debugger
Stackdriver Error Reporting
Stackdriver Logging
Stackdriver Trace
Storage Transfer Service
Talent Solution
Text-to-Speech
Traffic Director
Transfer Appliance
Video Intelligence API
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)
VPC Service Controls
Web Security Scanner

PCI examples on GCP:

PCI Requirement 1: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data

GCP PCI

PCI Requirement 2: Do not use vendor-supplied defaults

The PCI DSS contains a set of rules that describe how to set up machines that are part of a payment-processing architecture. These rules can be implemented in several ways, but Packer from Hashicorp offers an easy process to automate baking images.

Baking images helps meet requirements (and others)

2.2 Develop configuration standards for all system components. Assure that these standards address all known security vulnerabilities and are consistent with industry-accepted system hardening standards. 

2.2.1 Implement only one primary function per server to prevent functions that require different security levels from co-existing on the same server. 

2.2.2  Enable only necessary services, protocols, daemons, etc., as required for the function of the system. 

2.2.5 Remove all unnecessary functionality, such as scripts, drivers, features, subsystems, file systems, and unnecessary web servers.

Image baking

  • Base image – OS or hardened image from CIS with unnecessary packages removed
  • Core – packages and libraries needed for all instances (security, monitoring, language specific packages)
  • Application – application code

PCI Requirement 3: Protect stored cardholder data

PCI Requirement 3 talks about encryption at rest, there are multiple options on GCP to accomplish is
Google encrypts data at-rest by default with no configuration required by customers. In some cases, customers may want additional control over encryption for many reasons. For that reason, Google has two additional key management options. In the middle option, customers may choose to utilize customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) using Google Cloud Key Management Service (KMS). You can define access controls to encryption keys, establish rotation policies, and gather additional logging into encryption/decryption activities. In both the default and customer-managed case, Google remains the root-of-trust for encryption/decryption activities. On the right-hand side, customers may choose to use customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEK) in some Google services, such as Google Cloud Storage, in which Google is no longer in the root of trust. Using CSEK comes with the added risk of data loss, as Google can not help you decrypt data if you lose encryption keys. Furthermore, customers do not have to choose one key management option only. You can make use of the default encryption for most of your workload, meets regulatory requirements, and add some additional control for select applications

GCP PCI Example 2

Data Loss Prevention API can be used to sanitize PCI data

Requirement 3.4 stipulates that a PAN must be unreadable anywhere it is stored. While Google automatically offers encryption at rest, it doesn’t automatically perform the one-way hashes, truncation, or tokenization that the rules also require. Use GCS with DLP for truncation or tokenization or use KMS for strong cryptography with managed keys.

GCP PCI DLP

PCI Requirement 4: Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks

PCI requirement 4 talks about encryption transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks.

By default, any data sent to a data cloud service is encrypted by default using TLS from the user to the frontend (using BoringSSL) 

Once inside Google, what happens to your data? 

  • Google encrypts and authenticates all data in transit at one or more network layers when data moves outside physical boundaries not controlled by Google or on behalf of Google.
  • Data in transit inside a physical boundary controlled by or on behalf of Google is generally authenticated but not necessarily encrypted.

You can also take advantage of HTTPS load balancing to encrypt incoming customer traffic. Istio can be used to secure traffic between VMs. Cloud VPC can be used to establish a secure VPN tunnel between on-premises environment and payment-processing environment.

GCP PCI Encryption

Contact our GCP Security experts for a FREE GCP Security consultation, today!

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