PCI Compliance can seem like an overwhelming task for any business. However, staying compliant will protect your business against security breaches, minimising data theft and avoiding huge monetary losses.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI-DSS) set guidelines for any company that stores, processes, or transmits credit card information. This includes every business that accepts credit cards.
Security And Compliance
Maintaining compliance with business standards doesn’t have to be a headache. If you work with customers who pay using credit card information, PCI compliance services can give you a head start toward ensuring your business’s security while saving you time and money from dealing with paperwork and avoiding fines for violating the payment card industry data protection rules.
The rules cover how businesses store, transmit, and protect cardholder data. They also dictate how and where businesses may access the data. To maintain compliance, companies must document all the people and systems that have access to the data, monitor all activity, and test the security system regularly.
Auditing
A business that accepts credit card payments must be compliant. The 12 requirements mandated by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) protect data from cybercriminals and help reduce costly credit card fraud.
Among other things, compliance requires that all stored card data is encrypted using industry-accepted algorithms or is truncated, tokenized or hashed. The encryption keys must also be secure and regularly monitored. Additionally, the principle of least privilege is required for anyone with access to card data — it must be restricted to only those who truly need it.
Training
Businesses that take credit card payments will need to adhere to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS, to protect their customers’ personal information. In addition to ensuring that their websites use SSL certificates, they also need to make sure that all of their employees are familiar with PCI compliance standards.
When looking for a company to handle your PCI compliance needs, you should be able to find out which clients they have worked with in the past. You can even ask them for a list of testimonials to see what others have said about their work. This will give you a good idea of whether the company can deliver on its promises.
Monitoring
Protecting cardholder data can be challenging for fintechs, merchants, and service providers. With the right tools and services, this can be a much more manageable task for businesses. Ensure that your data is always safe and secure when it moves through e-commerce applications, point of sale systems, mobile devices, or personal computers and servers.
Maintaining compliance is a continuous process that helps to prevent security breaches and credit card data theft in the future. It also aids in meeting other regulations such as GDPR and CCPA.
Regardless of industry, any company that accepts, stores, or processes credit cards must be PCI compliant and validated annually by a qualified assessor (QSA). Non-compliance can result in sizable monetary fines and even having the ability to process payments revoked.
