AppSec Rolls Out Tool

NEW YORK -- Application Security, Inc. (AppSecInc) (http://www.appsecinc.com) today announced immediate availability of a new PCI-DSS Toolkit to help firms easily apply data security standard best-practice policies while reducing the burden of PCI compliance. AppSecInc (Booth # 3363) made the announcement from the ISACA(R) Compliance Conference at C3 Expo, taking place June 27-29 at the Jacob Javits Convention Center in New York City.

Building on the PCI configuration policies issued previously by AppSecInc, the toolkit facilitates understanding of PCI security best practices and how they relate to an organization's database applications. The first in a series, the toolkit complements the company's application-level vulnerability assessment scanner, AppDetective(TM) and is a key component in a comprehensive approach to vulnerability management. Through use of the toolkit, organizations can easily tune their database application security to the protections that are most relevant to PCI compliance.

Designed for use with AppDetective, the PCI Toolkit is available as a free download and contains:

The toolkit comes in response to customers seeking to better understand and comply with the PCI standard. Created in December 2004 with a compliance deadline of little more than a year ago in June 2005, the PCI data security standard was designed to better protect payment information from theft, fraud or misuse. Since the PCI initiative was issued, however, enterprise adoption has lagged with fewer than 20% of level-1 merchants presently in compliance. These 231 merchants process over 6 billion transactions annually. With the potential for fines of over $500,000 for non-compliance, merchants are actively seeking solutions to help them respond.

"Despite broad support for the PCI initiative, applying these best practices remains a challenge for the industry," said Ted Julian, Vice President of Strategy for AppSecInc. "These toolkits help customers better understand the requirements, map them to their crucial database applications, and then implement the appropriate protections, thereby yielding compliance while increasing the security of sensitive customer data."

Application Security Inc.