Advantio is granted PCI SSC Qualified PIN Assessor Status

Dublin, Ireland: Advantio Ltd, is a renowned provider of cyber resilience services and solutions. We are trusted globally for delivering on time and on budget. Today, we are honoured to announce our second Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) designation in Q2 of 2019; Qualified PIN Assessor (QPA). This follows in the footsteps of the Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV) certification in May 2019.

Organizations availing of Advantio cyber security expertise can now also rely on us to validate compliance with the PCI PIN Standard.

The Payment Card Brands (Visa, Mastercard, etc) decided in July 2018 to consolidate and transition the PIN Security Validation program to the PCI Security Standard Council (PCI SSC). While the program was announced then, the actual transition and opening of the application process took place in February 2019. The first QPA training and certification was then scheduled for June 2019. We are proud to be among the first Qualified PIN Security Assessor companies to attend the training and obtain the QPA designation. This enables Advantio to validate an organization’s compliance with the PCI PIN Standard.

The PCI SSC published the PCI PIN Security Requirements v3.0 in August 2018. To find out more about this, you can read our expert analysis here.

As one of Europe’s leading cyber security experts, we are proud to add the QPA designation to our existing Payment Card Industry Data Security certifications:

• Qualified Security Assessor (QSA)
• Payment Application Qualified Security Assessor (PA-QSA)
• PCI Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE) Assessor
• 3-D Secure Assessor
• Tokenization Service Provider (TSP) Assessor
• Approved Scanning Vendor (ASV)

“Advantio’s holistic approach to cyber security is the reason the top players in the payment industry choose us. Becoming a QPA is yet another service capability that helps our clients build a solid cyber security posture through the combination of multi-layered and integrated security solutions. All of which are supported by processes, security best practices and governance. Our team of experts are trained and live a culture of security as a shared responsibility. Ultimately, cyber security should be part of ‘business as usual’ - that’s taking a holistic and integrated approach to security,” explains Martin Petrov, COO of Advantio.

Advantio has the expertise to advance your business. We provide vendor-agnostic services to adopt best practices in the areas of compliance, data protection and information security. Each underpinned by industry and regulatory standards and frameworks such as ISO27000, ISO22300, GDPR, PSD2, SOC2, COBIT, CMMI.

About Advantio Ltd: Established in 2009, Advantio Ltd combines professional services, technology, managed security services and multilingual support. We deliver turnkey security and compliance solutions to global organizations. Advantio has been recognized as Europe’s second largest QSA provider by VISA. Our Professional Security Organization’s certifications include PCI QSA, PA-DSS, PCI P2PE, PCI 3DS, PCI QPA, CISSP, CISA, CISM, ISO/IEC 27001 Lead Auditor & Lead Implementer, OSCP, CEH and OSSTMM.

Advantio specializes in security payment data transactions. We do this by leveraging subject matter expertise, advisory services and the ZeroRisk software suite. This has led to Advantio becoming the security partner of choice for many large corporates and enterprises globally. We service industries including but not limited to banking, insurance, gaming, travel, retail, telco and the public sector.