6.4.2 Separation of duties between development/test and production environments
6.4.2 Observe processes and interview personnel assigned to development/test environments and personnel assigned to production environments to verify that separation of duties is in place between development/test environments and the production environment.
Reducing the number of personnel with access to the production environment and cardholder data minimizes risk and helps ensure that access is limited to those individuals with a business need to know.
The intent of this requirement is to separate development and test functions from production functions. For example, a developer may use an administrator-level account with elevated privileges in the development environment, and have a separate account with user-level access to the production environment.