Windows Azure Achieves PCI DSS Compliance

As part of a larger feature rollout on January 16, 2014, Microsoft also announced that Windows Azure has been validated for Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) compliance.

PCI DSS is the worldwide policy standard for providing security and privacy for accepting, storing, processing and transmitting payment card information, including cardholder data. In real terms, this means that companies can achieve their own PCI DSS certification and run their applications on Windows Azure.

In addition to the compliance validation, Microsoft is making two documents available to assist customers in achieving PCI DSS certification. Those documents are:

The PCI DSS compliance adds to a growing list of Windows Azure certifications including ISO/IEC, SOC 1 and SOC2, CSA CCM, the UK's G-Cloud, FedRAMP, and HIPAA.

The Windows Azure compliance list is available here: Windows Azure Trust Center