Description

A focused course, tailored for you

The DevOps Security Engineer's Merchant Compliance Playbook

Turn the platform controls you already run into auditor-ready evidence merchant security reviewers accept on the first pass.

The merchant onboarding queue has a security questionnaire that wants attestation evidence for the runtime controls in your pipeline. Not a SOC 2 letter. Not a marketing trust page. The specific control mapped to the specific requirement, with the specific artefact that proves it.

$199 one-time

Tailored to your situation. Access within 24 hours. 30-day money-back.

Includes a hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access, generated for your specific situation.

Why this course

Platform DevOps and security engineers at commerce infrastructure providers sit between two worlds. On one side, the runtime: signed commits, Kubernetes admission policies, Terraform state, secrets rotation, runtime detection, blast-radius limits, immutable infrastructure. On the other side, merchant reviewers, procurement teams, internal audit, and external assessors who all want the same controls expressed as evidence they can paste into an assessment workbook and close a row. The translation is what gets dropped. Engineers ship the control, the questionnaire arrives weeks later, and someone scrambles to reverse-engineer the evidence narrative under a deadline. This course closes that gap by treating the runtime control and its evidence artefact as a single deliverable, designed once, reused across every merchant review, PCI DSS assessment, SOC 2 walkthrough, and ISO surveillance.

What you walk away with

Map every runtime control your pipeline enforces to the specific PCI DSS v4, SOC 2 CC, and ISO 27001 A.8 requirement it satisfies.
Produce evidence artefacts a merchant reviewer accepts on the first pass without engineering escalation.
Reuse the same evidence pack across merchant onboarding, internal audit, surveillance audits, and procurement reviews.
Cut merchant security questionnaire response time from weeks to hours.
Hand procurement and legal a translation layer they can run without pulling engineers into every review.

The 12 modules

Module 1. The merchant review queue and the evidence gap

Walk through three real merchant security questionnaires of the type platform DevOps engineers see weekly. Identify the specific runtime control each question is asking about, where the evidence currently lives, and the translation step that is missing. Build a one-page map of every question type a merchant procurement team typically asks and the pipeline artefact that answers it.

Module 2. Signed commits and the supply chain evidence narrative

Document the signed-commit policy your pipeline already enforces. Capture the verification log, the key rotation history, and the exception workflow. Map each to PCI DSS v4 requirement 6.3.3, SOC 2 CC8.1, and the SLSA level your supply chain already meets. Produce a single evidence artefact the merchant reviewer can verify without re-running your pipeline.

Module 3. Kubernetes admission policies as a control catalogue

Treat your OPA, Kyverno, or admission webhook policies as the runtime control catalogue. Document the policy code, the deployment manifest, the audit log shape, and the alert path when a policy denies. Map each policy to the requirement it satisfies under PCI DSS network segmentation, SOC 2 CC6.6, and ISO 27001 A.8.20. Build the evidence pack a merchant reviewer accepts.

Module 4. Secrets rotation, KMS, and the cryptographic evidence pack

Document the secrets rotation cadence your platform runs, the KMS key hierarchy, the envelope encryption pattern, and the access log retention. Map to PCI DSS v4 requirement 3.6 and 8.3, SOC 2 CC6.1, and ISO 27001 A.8.24. Produce the artefact set that satisfies a merchant cryptography review without exposing key material.

Module 5. Immutable infrastructure and change management evidence

Capture the immutable infra pattern your platform uses: container image signing, base image SBOM, Terraform state lock, drift detection, and the canary or blue-green deployment pattern. Map each to PCI DSS v4 requirement 6.5, SOC 2 CC8.1, and ISO 27001 A.8.9. Build the change-management evidence narrative without requiring engineers to manually document each deployment.

Module 6. Runtime detection, response, and the SOC evidence story

Document the runtime detection layer: eBPF or agent-based, the detection rules, the response workbook, the on-call rotation, the post-incident review pattern. Map to PCI DSS v4 requirement 10 and 11.5, SOC 2 CC7.2 and CC7.3, and ISO 27001 A.8.16. Produce the evidence pack a merchant reviewer accepts for monitoring and incident response.

Module 7. Blast-radius limits, network segmentation, and tenancy evidence

Document the multi-tenant boundary: VPC design, service mesh authorisation, per-tenant data isolation, blast-radius limits during incidents. Map to PCI DSS v4 requirement 1 and the network segmentation guidance, SOC 2 CC6.6, and ISO 27001 A.8.22. Build the diagram and narrative a merchant reviewer accepts for tenant isolation without exposing tenant-specific configuration.

Module 8. Vulnerability management and the patching evidence cadence

Document the vulnerability scanning cadence, the SLA per severity, the patching workflow, the exception register, and the residual risk acceptance pattern. Map to PCI DSS v4 requirement 6.3 and 11.3, SOC 2 CC7.1, and ISO 27001 A.8.8. Produce the artefact set that satisfies a merchant vulnerability management review without quarter-end fire drills.

Module 9. Identity, access reviews, and the human-control evidence pack

Document the identity model: SSO, MFA enforcement, just-in-time access, quarterly access reviews, joiner-mover-leaver workflow, and the privileged access path. Map to PCI DSS v4 requirement 7 and 8, SOC 2 CC6.1 through CC6.3, and ISO 27001 A.5.16 through A.5.18. Build the evidence pack a merchant reviewer accepts for the human side of access control.

Module 10. Logging, retention, and the forensic-ready evidence stance

Capture the logging architecture: what gets logged, where it lands, the retention period, the integrity protection, the tamper-evidence pattern, and the forensic readiness narrative. Map to PCI DSS v4 requirement 10, SOC 2 CC7.2, and ISO 27001 A.8.15 and A.8.16. Produce the artefact set a merchant reviewer accepts for log management and audit trail integrity.

Module 11. Vendor and subprocessor evidence for the merchant questionnaire

Document the subprocessor list, the vendor security review cadence, the data processing addenda, and the customer-facing transparency artefacts. Map to PCI DSS v4 requirement 12.8 and 12.9, SOC 2 CC9.2, and ISO 27001 A.5.19 through A.5.22. Build the artefact set a merchant procurement team accepts without escalating to engineering for every subprocessor question.

Module 12. The reusable evidence pack and the playbook handoff

Assemble the modules above into a single reusable evidence pack. Document the refresh cadence per artefact, the owner per control, and the merchant-review response workflow. Hand the pack to procurement and legal so the next merchant questionnaire is answered in hours, not weeks, without pulling platform engineers into every review. Includes the per-buyer implementation playbook tuned to your platform's control catalogue.

How this addresses your situation

Specific modules that map to what you said you are dealing with.

A new merchant security questionnaire lands in the onboarding queue and asks for runtime control evidence rather than a SOC 2 letter.

Internal audit asks for the same control evidence three weeks before the surveillance window opens.

A PCI DSS QSA wants to walk the pipeline from commit to deploy and asks for evidence at each control point.

Procurement at a large prospective merchant hands over a 400-question security workbook with a two-week response SLA.

What you get with this course

Twelve written modules with worked examples for every control area.
Downloadable evidence-pack templates per control area, ready to fill in against your pipeline.
Control-to-requirement map across PCI DSS v4, SOC 2 CC, and ISO 27001 A.8.
The hand-built implementation playbook tuned to your platform's control catalogue.
Reusable merchant questionnaire response template.
30-day money-back if the playbook does not save you a week on your next merchant review.

What you will have in hand by Day 1, Week 1, Month 1

Within 24 hours: account in the learning environment provisioned, tailored implementation playbook delivered alongside.

Week 1: modules 1 through 4 — merchant review queue map, signed commits, admission policies, secrets and KMS.

Week 2: modules 5 through 8 — immutable infra, runtime detection, blast-radius limits, vulnerability management.

Week 3: modules 9 through 12 — identity, logging, vendor evidence, reusable evidence pack handoff.

Week 4: dry-run the reusable evidence pack against a real merchant questionnaire.

Before and after

Before

Every merchant security questionnaire is a fire drill. Engineers get pulled out of the roadmap to reverse-engineer evidence narratives under a deadline. The same control gets re-documented every time. Internal audit, external QSA, and merchant reviewers each get a different version of the answer.

After

The runtime control and its evidence artefact are designed once and refreshed on a cadence. Merchant questionnaires are answered in hours from a reusable evidence pack. Procurement and legal own the response workflow. Engineers are pulled in only for genuinely new questions, not for re-documenting controls that already exist.

What happens if you do not address this

Merchant onboarding cycles stretch because every security review is a custom evidence project. Engineering capacity bleeds into compliance translation work that does not ship product. The platform loses deals to competitors whose security review packs are tighter, even when the underlying controls are equivalent.

Who it is for

Platform DevOps and security engineers, SREs with a security remit, infrastructure security leads, and detection and response engineers at commerce, SaaS, fintech, and B2B platform providers where merchants or customers run their own security reviews. Specifically the engineer who owns the pipeline that ships the control and has now been pulled into the merchant onboarding evidence conversation.

Who this is NOT for. Compliance generalists with no platform context. GRC analysts who do not write code. Sales engineers looking for a trust-page narrative. Anyone wanting a checklist that does not connect back to a specific pipeline artefact.

How it arrives

Text-based course in the Art of Service learning environment, plus downloadable templates and worked examples for every module, plus the hand-built implementation playbook delivered alongside course access.

Time investment. Three to four hours per week for four weeks. The modules read as engineering documentation, not classroom theory.

Why $199 is the right number

Compared to hiring a GRC analyst, this course gives the platform engineer who already owns the controls the translation layer to the assessment frameworks, without adding a headcount. Compared to a generic SOC 2 or PCI DSS prep course, this one starts from the pipeline artefacts engineers already produce and works outward to the requirement, not the other way around. Compared to free auditor guidance, this one names the specific evidence artefact per requirement and ships a reusable response template.

FAQ

Do I need a compliance background to follow this?

No. The course is written for platform engineers. The compliance frameworks are introduced through the pipeline artefacts engineers already produce.

Is this PCI DSS specific or general platform compliance?

Both. PCI DSS v4 is the most demanding evidence framework most platform engineers will encounter, so the course uses it as the anchor and then maps each control to the equivalent SOC 2 CC and ISO 27001 A.8 requirement so the same evidence pack covers all three.

Will the implementation playbook fit my specific platform stack?

The playbook is hand-built per buyer against the control catalogue you actually run. Share the stack on intake and the playbook arrives tuned to it within 24 hours of purchase.

How does this differ from a vendor trust page?

A trust page is marketing copy. This course produces the evidence artefacts that sit behind the trust page, the ones a merchant reviewer actually opens during a procurement review.

Will it stay current as PCI DSS v4 future-dated requirements come into force?

Yes. The reusable evidence pack pattern is designed to refresh against requirement changes on the same cadence the control runs at, not as a one-off remediation project.

30-day money-back guarantee. If after a week of working through the materials this is not what you needed, reply to the receipt email and a full refund is processed. No questions, no forms.

Within 24 hours your account in the learning environment is provisioned and the tailored implementation playbook is delivered alongside it.