Is it PCI DSS Compliant?

So I went a little excited and told my new boss about how I hope to move the company's applications to Windows Azure and all of a sudden, she threw this question at me...

"Is Microsoft's Cloud PCI DSS compliant?"

I stared at her with a blank face, "PCI what?"

"Our apps deal with credit card information so wherever we host, it needs to be PCI DSS compliant", she explained. "If it is not compliant, I am afraid we can't move to the cloud", she added.

I was heart-broken :'( A quick search on Google (hehe... now I can say this) tells me a bit more about PCI DSS. So it stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Then, further searches landed me with this awesome paper - Securing Microsoft's Cloud Infrastructure. According to the whitepaper, Microsoft's Cloud undergoes annual audits for PCI DSS, SOX and HIPAA compliance. They also obtained ISO/IEC 27001:2005 certification and SAS 70 Type 1 and II attestations.

What a relief?! Now, I can continue to cloud seed on my boss *HeHe*