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The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) seeks to protect cardholder data security — and to provide a rationale for universally consistent data security protocols in the credit/debit card payment industry.
It is a requirement for any vendor or service provider who stores, transmits, or processes any cardholder data. If your New Orleans organization handles card payments, you must be PCI-compliant. Noncompliance could see you suffer massive financial penalties or sanctions against your facility’s ability to accept card payments.
PCI compliance is mandatory for all organizations that accept credit and debit cards or those that store, process, and/or transmit cardholder data. Merchants and service providers’ compliance requirements differ depending on two main factors:
Individual payment brands set the criteria and compliance programs that you have to follow, guided by the dictates of PCI Standards.
The PCI DSS is a standard, not a law to be implemented by the state or federal government. It is, therefore, only enforced through agreements between acquiring banks, merchants, and payment brands. A payment brand can penalize the acquiring banks for breach of PCI standards. In response, the banks will transfer the penalties to the non-complying merchants or even revoke their ability to accept card payments.
Quite often, PCI DSS breach is also considered as a GDPR breach since the Regulation classifies cardholder data as personal data. So, alongside fines and sanctions from your acquiring bank, you face the threat of hefty penalties of up to €20,000 (currently $23,294,000) or 4% of your firm’s annual global turnover.
As you can see, PCI non-compliance is very costly. If you are running a small or medium-sized enterprise, the overall impact could just put you out of business. Besides, your organization’s reputation will be gravely dented.
PCI DSS is a broad concept with up to twelve requirements. They can, however, be organized into six general control objectives:
Yes, you can — but it’s not the best option, especially when you can outsource this service to a more competent team at just a fraction of your in-house budget.
Besides, compliance with this Standard is notoriously complicated. Data from Verizon’s 2018 Payment Security Report shows that 47.5% of the firms tested for interim PCI DSS compliance failed to maintain all security controls. One way or the other, you will need a seasoned IT services company like BIOS Technologies to help you pick up the slack.
Our team will:
BIOS Technologies’ mission is to deliver superior IT support to the SMB market in the New Orleans Metro Area. We focus on companies that understand the business/security risks of unmanaged technology and want to maximize efficiency and profitability.
November 15,2020
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