Over the past few years, PCI compliance in the public cloud has been a growing topic of concern and interest. Like us, you probably have heard assertions from both sides of the topic - some stating that one can be a PCI compliant merchant using public IaaS cloud, others stating that it is impossible. We’ll discuss foundational principles and mindsets for PCI compliance, how to determine system/application scope and requirement applicability, and how to meet top-level PCI DSS (Data Security Standard) requirements in the public IaaS cloud.