Free PCI-compliance application launched by Acuity

Governance, risk and compliance (GRC) vendor Acuity has released a free management application for businesses to measure, monitor and report on their compliance to version two of the payment card industry data security standard (PCI-DSS).

Available for download from the Acuity website, the compliance software monitors progress against the PCI-DSS's 'milestones approach' and could identify, assess, manage and report on risks to cardholder data. It may also track residual risk status relating to performance of PCI controls and key metrics, and supply visibility of data for auditors.

According to the corporate, the tool reduces the time it takes to gather, collate and report on compliance, improves governance and decreases the price of external audits and due diligence.

It also claimed that after used with a free version of Acuity's STREAM Integrated Risk Manager software, it's used to completely automate PCI compliance management functions, recording and maintaining the present status against PCI-DSS and using management reporting to view current and historical statuses with trend analysis.

Simon Marvell, partner at Acuity Risk Management, said: “As PCI requirements impact any business handling payment card information, there's critical need for a sensible, risk-based way to PCI compliance in accordance with easy-to-use, accessible tools that identify, log and report incidents or near misses and use this knowledge to repeatedly improve PCI compliance management processes.”