About PCI Watch

What We Track

PCI Watch monitors and archives publicly-available resources from the PCI Security Standards Council:

• PCI SSC FAQs - Additions, updates, and removals to the FAQ database
• PCI SSC Documents - Changes to the Document Library
• PCI Perspectives Blog - Posts from the official blog
• Newsroom - Press releases, statements, and media coverage

Why PCI Watch?

The PCI SSC regularly updates its guidance, documents, and FAQs, but there's no official changelog or notification system for these updates. PCI Watch fills this gap by:

Copyright and Legal Basis

United States

PCI Watch operates under the fair use provisions of U.S. copyright law (17 U.S.C. 107). The archiving and comparison of publicly available content serves a transformative purpose: enabling commentary, criticism, and research into how payment card industry guidance evolves over time.

European Union / France

This service is hosted in France and relies on exceptions under French and EU copyright law:

• Article L122-5, 3(a) of the Code de la propriete intellectuelle permits analyses and short quotations justified by the critical, informative, or scientific nature of the work incorporating them.
• Article L122-5-3 (implementing EU Directive 2019/790, Article 4) permits text and data mining of lawfully accessed works for any purpose.

Archival Access Policy

PCI Watch maintains archives of publicly-available PCI SSC guidance for tracking changes over time.

While documents remain available from official sources: We provide comparison and commentary tools linking to official versions. Users are directed to pcisecuritystandards.org for authoritative guidance.

When PCI SSC removes a document: We may make our archived copy accessible for historical reference, research, and accountability purposes. Archived documents will be clearly labelled with:

• The date removed from pcisecuritystandards.org
• A notice that it's for historical reference only
• A link to current PCI SSC resources

Disclaimer