Weak Enforcement and Low Compliance in PCI DSS: A Comparative Security Study

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Park, Soonwon, Hastings, John D.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Park, Soonwon
Hastings, John D.
author_facet Park, Soonwon
Hastings, John D.
contents Although credit and debit card data continue to be a prime target for attackers, organizational adherence to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) remains surprisingly low. Despite prior work showing that PCI DSS can reduce card fraud, only 32.4% of organizations were fully compliant in 2022, suggesting possible deficiencies in enforcement mechanisms. This study employs a comparative analysis (qualitative and indicator-based) to examine how enforcement mechanisms relate to implementation success in PCI DSS in relation to HIPAA, NIS2, and GDPR. The analysis reveals that PCI DSS significantly lags far behind these security frameworks and that its sanctions are orders of magnitude smaller than those under GDPR and NIS2. The findings indicate a positive association between stronger, multi-modal enforcement (including public disclosure, license actions, and imprisonment) and higher implementation rates, and highlight the structural weakness of PCI DSS's bank-dependent monitoring model. Enhanced non-monetary sanctions and the creation of an independent supervisory authority are recommended to increase transparency, reduce conflicts of interest, and improve PCI DSS compliance without discouraging card acceptance.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_13430
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Weak Enforcement and Low Compliance in PCI DSS: A Comparative Security Study
Park, Soonwon
Hastings, John D.
Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
K.6.0; K.4.1; K.5.2; K.6.1
Although credit and debit card data continue to be a prime target for attackers, organizational adherence to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) remains surprisingly low. Despite prior work showing that PCI DSS can reduce card fraud, only 32.4% of organizations were fully compliant in 2022, suggesting possible deficiencies in enforcement mechanisms. This study employs a comparative analysis (qualitative and indicator-based) to examine how enforcement mechanisms relate to implementation success in PCI DSS in relation to HIPAA, NIS2, and GDPR. The analysis reveals that PCI DSS significantly lags far behind these security frameworks and that its sanctions are orders of magnitude smaller than those under GDPR and NIS2. The findings indicate a positive association between stronger, multi-modal enforcement (including public disclosure, license actions, and imprisonment) and higher implementation rates, and highlight the structural weakness of PCI DSS's bank-dependent monitoring model. Enhanced non-monetary sanctions and the creation of an independent supervisory authority are recommended to increase transparency, reduce conflicts of interest, and improve PCI DSS compliance without discouraging card acceptance.
title Weak Enforcement and Low Compliance in PCI DSS: A Comparative Security Study
topic Cryptography and Security
Computers and Society
K.6.0; K.4.1; K.5.2; K.6.1
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.13430