What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 1.2.5 Allowed services, protocols and ports justified?

Register of permitted services, protocols and ports with business justification and approver for each entry; Exported NSC rulesets cross-referenced to the register; Approval records naming the approver for each entry (the guidance favours an approver independent of the configuration owner); Port scan results of CDE boundaries compared to the approved list.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 1.2.5?

Rules permit port ranges or any-service entries with no individual justification

PCI DSS v4.0.1 · Req 1: Network Security Controls

`1.2.5` Allowed services, protocols and ports justified

Every service, protocol and port that is permitted must be identified, approved, and supported by a defined business need. The guidance explains the purpose: once the needed items are known, everything else can be disabled or removed rather than left open and unpatched, and it recommends that approvals come from people independent of those managing the configuration. Applicability: no special notes; applies to every assessed entity. Customized approach objective: network traffic that is not authorised, whether services, protocols or packets bound for particular ports, cannot pass into or out of the network.

Source: PCI DSS v4.0.1, 1.2.5. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open PCI DSS v4.0.1 in the compliance library.

Version 4.0.1 is the active version; 4.0 has been retired. Appendix A1 applies only to multi-tenant service providers, A2 only to card-present POS POI terminals that still use SSL or early TLS, and A3 only when a payment brand or acquirer requires it. Which requirements apply to you follows your validation type.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

moderate

to go live

Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling

where the evidence lives

teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review. To go live: easy when half or more of the artefacts are already held by a system, moderate from a quarter to a half, hard below a quarter.

These are the artefacts auditors commonly ask for on this requirement, our guidance rather than text from the standard. Your assessor decides what is sufficient in your context, and asks for samples across the period when a report covers one.

system holds itEvidence a system already holds

Port scan results of CDE boundaries compared to the approved list · Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Approval records naming the approver for each entry (the guidance favours an approver independent of the configuration owner) · Cloud console / configuration management

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Register of permitted services, protocols and ports with business justification and approver for each entry · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Exported NSC rulesets cross-referenced to the register · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Rules permit port ranges or any-service entries with no individual justification
Justification register not updated when applications are decommissioned
Approvals given by the same administrator who manages the ruleset, against the guidance on independent approval

Do this for your whole sheet

Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.

Build my evidence sheet

1.2.4 Accurate data-flow diagram for account data · 1.2.6 Security features for insecure services in use