Requirement 10.6.2 Clarification

As a refresher, requirement 10.6.2 states:

“Review logs of all other system components periodically based on the organization’s policies and risk management strategy, as determined by the organization’s annual risk assessment.”

The argument in PCI circles is the definition of “all other systems”.  Some of us believed that it meant systems other than those in-scope.  Other people believed that it had to refer to only in-scope systems such as a user workstation.  As a result, I asked the PCI SSC to clarify this requirement and this is the response I got back.

“In PCI DSS v2.0, logs for all in-scope systems were required to be reviewed daily. However it was recognized that for larger or more complex environments, there could be lower risk systems that were in scope for PCI DSS that could warrant less frequent log reviews. As such, PCI DSS v3.0 defines a number of events and system types that require daily log reviews, and allows the organization to determine the log review frequency for all other in-scope events and systems that do not fall into those categories.

For some environments, such as those designed specifically for the purposes of PCI DSS, then it is possible that all in-scope systems fall under the system categories defined in Requirement 10.6.1, meaning that daily log reviews are required for all in-scope systems. In other environments, there may be many different types of system that are considered in-scope, but which are not critical systems and neither store, process or transmit CHD nor provide security services to the CDE. Some possible examples could be stock- control or inventory-control systems, print servers (assuming there is no printing of CHD) or certain types of workstations. For these events or systems, the entity, as part of its annual risk assessment process, is expected to define the frequency for reviews based on the risk to its specific environment.

The intent of this update is not to apply PCI DSS Requirements to out-of-scope systems. We realize that the current wording is causing confusion and will address this in the next revision.”

So there we have it.  Not the first time my interpretation was wrong.  The requirement means in-scope systems that, from an assessment of risk, are at less of a risk of compromise can reduce the frequency of log reviews.

But that means you need to have an accurate risk assessment to support your argument.  So those of you that have not explicitly assessed the risk of your category 2 systems will have to break them out to support a reduced log review frequency.

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