I’m still out at SANS, in a session dedicated to PCI and web application security.

Now, as you readers know, I’m not the biggest fan of PCI. The truth is (this is the “bad” part) it’s mostly a tool to minimize the risk of the credit card companies by transferring as much risk and cost as possible to the merchants and processors.

On the other hand (the “good” side), it’s clear that PCI is slowly driving organizations which would otherwise ignore security to take it more seriously. I’ve met with a bunch of security admins out here who tell me they are finally getting resources from the business that they didn’t have before. Sure, many of them also complain those resources are only to give them the bare minimum needed for compliance, but in these cases that’s still significant.

When it comes to web application security, it’s also a mixed bag. On the “good” side, including web application defense in section 6.6 is driving significant awareness that web applications are a major vector for successful attacks. On the “bad” side, 6.6 places code review and WAFs as competing, not complementary, technologies. These tools solve very different problems, something I hope PCI eventually recognizes. I don’t totally blame them on this one, since requiring both in every organization within the compliance deadlines isn’t reasonable, but I’d like to see PCI publicly recognize that the “either/or” decision is one of limited resources, not that the technologies themselves are equivalent.

One take-away from the event, based on conversations with end users and other experts, is that WAFs are your best quick fix, while secure coding is the way to go for long-term risk reduction.

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