Having got the qualification, you want to make sure that you stay qualified.
This is pretty easy.
You need to requalify every three years.
You need to pass an online re‑qualification exam, which you can do
from the comfort of your own computer rather than going to a
Pearson VUE testing center. You have to pay the maintenance fee,
which at the moment is $165 U.S.
dollars. And you have to demonstrate you've collected 10 hours
of continuing professional education every year, so that's a
total of 30 hours over 3 years, and that's going to be easy if
you're a Pluralsight learner.
Now,
I must warn you that the PCI SSC has very little
tolerance if you miss the deadline.
If you don't complete all the requirements of the
re‑qualification within 14 days of your 3 years expiring,
then you have to start all over again and take the original exam at a
Pearson VUE testing center and pay the original exam fee, so I'd
encourage you to put a note in your diary now to renew your
qualification a good 30 days before it's due.
The PCI Professional is the only qualification focused on anyone in
the payment industry that's promoted by the PCI SSC.
It's a great addition to your portfolio,
especially if you're working on a PCI DSS project or a PCI DSS program.
There's one closed‑book examination where you have to answer
75 multiple choice questions in 90 minutes.
Once you have achieved the qualification,
it will last you 3 years, and at the end of 3 years you need to
demonstrate 30 hours of continuing professional educational CPE,
take the online re‑qualification exam, pay $165, and most importantly,
don't be late. I'd really encourage you to go for the formal PCIP qualification.
Taking the exam really does solidify your knowledge, and it's a great
qualification to have when you're working on a PCI project or a PCI DSS
program, because you've got the foundational knowledge that makes some of the
strange bits of how payment processing work and the way that PCI DSS wants to
protect cardholder data much more logical,
so go on, test yourself! There's a whole learning path for the PCI
Professional certification that will give you all the information you
need and much more here at Pluralsight. The next course I'd recommend
gives a broad overview of PCI DSS, and that's the course called PCI DSS:
The Big Picture. After that,
there are four courses that cover all of the nearly 300 or so PCI
DSS requirements in depth. And then finally,
what's one of my favorite courses, which describes how best an
organization can get compliant with PCI DSS, but more important,
maintain its compliance and its security.