How ThreatNG's External Discovery Enhances PCI Scope Validation for QSAs
As a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), you are a security professional responsible for helping businesses comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). In simple terms, your job is to ensure that companies handling credit card information maintain security.
A critical part of this is validating the company's security "scope"—all the systems, networks, and data that need to be protected. If this list is incomplete, it creates a significant risk. A scope based only on what the client provides can miss forgotten assets or "shadow IT" that fall outside of traditional security scans. When you rely on these scans, you can only check what's already known, leaving the company vulnerable.
ThreatNG offers a powerful new way to help you with this. It's a frictionless and purely external solution that works from an attacker's perspective, without needing any connectors or access to the client's network. This allows it to continuously find overlooked assets and exposures, giving you an independent, reliable source of information to ensure the scope is truly comprehensive. This helps you deliver a more accurate and defensible security assessment.
How ThreatNG Complements Your Current Efforts
ThreatNG's discovery process provides "concrete data" that allows you to cross-reference against the client’s declared scope. This enriches your assessment and strengthens your findings:
Uncovering Hidden Assets: ThreatNG helps QSAs "validate the completeness of a client's declared PCI DSS scope (Requirement 1.4.2)". For example, suppose ThreatNG identifies a "forgotten staging server with an exposed admin page" that was not included in the client’s inventory. In that case, you have "concrete evidence" to challenge the existing scope and ensure these assets are brought into compliance and explicitly included in future Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV) and internal vulnerability scans. This is a critical finding that traditional scans, operating on a predefined list, would miss.
Expanding the Inventory: Beyond just servers, ThreatNG's external discovery can identify other assets that might fall into scope, including "Mobile Applications", "Private IPs Found", "Shared IPs Found", and "Web3 Domains". These are assets that may be unknown to internal teams and would be missed by traditional vulnerability scanners. ThreatNG’s ability to find these assets ensures your scope is genuinely comprehensive, leading to a more accurate and defensible Attestation of Compliance (AOC).
Opening New Opportunities for Your Practice
This capability not only enhances your current efforts but also helps you expand your services:
Time Savings and Efficiency: By providing an independent data set, ThreatNG helps you "expedite the scope validation phase of the assessment". Instead of relying solely on client-provided lists, you can quickly identify gaps, which saves time in discovery and clarification. This allows you to redirect your focus to higher-value advisory work.
Enhanced Advisory Services: The discoveries made by ThreatNG open up opportunities to offer new services to your clients. You can advise them on implementing their own "continuous asset discovery tools and processes". You can also provide specialized consulting, such as secure configuration reviews for newly discovered applications, thereby expanding the scope of your engagement beyond the standard audit.
From Limited Scope to Total Coverage: ThreatNG's Role in Modern PCI Audits
Traditional PCI DSS vulnerability scans are an indispensable part of your work, but their reliance on a predefined and often incomplete scope is a significant limitation. ThreatNG's frictionless, purely external, and attacker-centric discovery provides a powerful complement to these efforts. By continuously and independently mapping a client’s whole external attack surface, ThreatNG helps you uncover hidden assets and exposures that would otherwise go unnoticed. This directly addresses the risk of delivering "incomplete assessments" and positions you as a trusted advisor capable of providing a more accurate and defensible Attestation of Compliance (AOC).
Ready to see how ThreatNG can enhance your PCI practice and help your clients achieve proper, continuous security? Check out a free evaluation of your organization's external attack surface today.
