If your business handles data for EU customers, you might wonder if the PCI scans you already run also cover GDPR. The short answer: partly. Here's where the two actually meet, and where they don't.
What GDPR Actually Requires
GDPR is the EU's data privacy law. It covers any personal data belonging to an EU resident, not just payment card data. That includes names, emails, IP addresses, and browsing behavior.
To comply, a business generally needs to:
- Have a legal basis for collecting and using personal data.
- Get clear consent when consent is the basis you're relying on.
- Let people access, correct, or delete their own data.
- Only collect the data you actually need.
- Run a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) for higher-risk processing.
- Report a data breach to regulators within 72 hours.
- Keep records showing how and why you process personal data.
None of this is optional, and most of it has nothing to do with vulnerability scanning.
Where PCI Scanning and GDPR Overlap
GDPR Article 32 requires "appropriate technical and organizational measures" to keep personal data secure, and it specifically calls out regular testing of those measures. That's exactly what a PCI ASV scan does. It finds security holes in your servers and web apps before someone else does.
Catching those holes early also helps with GDPR's 72-hour breach notification rule, since a vulnerability that gets fixed before it's used against you is a breach that never happens. So a clean scan history is real evidence you're taking Article 32 seriously.
Where They Don't Overlap
PCI scanning is scoped to your cardholder data environment: the systems that touch card numbers, expiration dates, and CVVs. GDPR covers all personal data across your whole business, and most of that data never touches a payment system at all.
A PCI scan also doesn't touch the GDPR items that aren't about security: consent, data subject requests, data minimization, or your records of processing. Those need their own process, not a scan.
So a passing PCI scan is evidence toward one part of GDPR, keeping your systems secure. It's not proof that your business is GDPR compliant overall, and we don't want to suggest otherwise.
What ServerScan Offers
ServerScan runs ASV-certified vulnerability scans on the servers and applications that handle your customers' data, on the same quarterly schedule PCI DSS requires. Each scan report documents what was tested, what was found, and what got fixed, which is exactly the kind of record GDPR Article 32 expects you to keep.
Every ServerScan subscription includes unlimited PCI scanning. You can schedule a scan as often as you want, whenever you want, at no extra charge. That matters for GDPR too, because Article 32 asks for regularly testing your security, not a once-a-quarter checkbox. Scan again after every server change or patch, and you've got ongoing proof you're staying on top of it, not just a snapshot from three months ago.
We also offer penetration testing for a deeper look at your security, useful if a DPIA calls for more than a standard vulnerability scan.
What we don't offer is GDPR legal advice. Consent flows, data subject request handling, and your records of processing are legal and operational questions, not scanning ones. For those, talk to a data privacy attorney or a GDPR compliance consultant.
If you have questions about how our scanning fits into your GDPR security work, contact our support team. We're happy to help.