Avast on Point of Sale for PCI Compliance?

Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security
1

I am working with a global quick service restaurant brand on their PCI DSS strategy. I have also been a loyal Avast user for 4 years. I have no reservations about recommending Avast Professional for the back office computers in the restaurants, but wondering if anyone has experience running Avast on the front counter POS systems? Obviously if POS goes down, the restaurant is dead. The specific POS systems we are looking at are Xpient (Windows/Windows CE), and Sicom (Linux).

Thanks for any insight,
T

2

Never worked on a POS system before, so I don’t have any advise for you. However, do they even have internet connections? I figured they’d just be connected to a LAN, and possibly over an ATM connection or some relay to headquarters, but not internet. If so, I doubt anti-virus would be important.

Again, I have no idea how those systems work, or what they’re connected to.

3

Yes, many of the new POS terminals have an on-board credit card swipe device. To be compliant, the data must be encrypted before going over the Internet for processing. Also, to be compliant, the POS must have anti-virus protection. Most folks are using McAfee or Norton. Just wondering if there is anyone using Avast successfully. Unfortunately, I’m not in a position to be the first!
Thanks, Tim

4

Antivirus probably would not be good enough for important computer, but could provide additional security. Probably better if using intrusion prevention system ~
Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusion_prevention_system#Host-based

Edit: only use it if you understand what should be allowed to work properly

5

Intrusion prevention, intrusion detection, audit log aggregation/reviewing, and file integrity monitoring are ALSO required in addition to A/V protection. All 12 high level requirements can be viewed here: https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/security_standards/pci_dss.shtml

6

Speculation isn’t helpful to anyone.

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post information removed
To DavidR: Please specify to which part of a post you reply next time ~

8

I have seen Avast Pro work fine on some of our POS systems. I can’t speak for the Linux systems, as all of about computers are Windows based. If the POS system goes down the site isn’t necessarily dead, most sites have some kind of crash kit for just such emergencies.

9

The complete post is speculation, so I refere to all of it that remained. I have no idea what was there before you edited it, as you would see from the time stamp on your edit and the time stamp on my post.

If you haven’t been involved with POS then it is best to monitor the topic and possibly learn as in the following post by tdavis, stating the POS security requirements.

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And discussion should probably not be posted. It was posted as suggestion only to improve the security of operating system, but not POS, and depending on whether what should be allowed would be configured properly ~

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The point of the posts is to offer help on the question asked:

I have no reservations about recommending Avast Professional for the back office computers in the restaurants, [b]but wondering if anyone has experience running Avast on the front counter POS systems?[/b]

Relevant bit highlighted.

12

OK :slight_smile:
post information removed, don’t have to reply to the post above