Martin Petrov, CTO of Integrity 360, explains why businesses need to comply with PCI DSS to keep help win the fight against cybercriminals and fraudsters.
What is PCI DSS, and why should my business comply with it?
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a global information security standard established in 2005 by the leading payment card brands in an effort to self-regulate the payment card industry.
The standard’s ultimate goal is to safeguard consumers and all other entities in the payment ecosystem – including merchants, service providers, and issuing and merchant banks – from criminals gaining access to cardholder data and committing fraud.
“PCI DSS compliance equips businesses with robust security measures to safeguard against the ever-evolving tactics of fraudsters and cybercriminals”
Over the years, PCI DSS has evolved into a mature and globally recognised standard, with its latest version, PCI DSS v4.0.1, addressing many of the current attack and compromise techniques used by criminals.
The standard contains over 350 individual requirements, covering IT and cyber security controls such as firewalls, antivirus, systems patching, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing. These are designed to ensure the secure processing, storage, and transmission of cardholder data.
Compliance is obligatory for all merchants and service providers and needs to be validated on an annual basis by a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA). Non-compliance can result in fines, higher transaction costs, and even the loss of payment processing capabilities. While regulatory-driven, PCI DSS compliance ultimately helps businesses avoid more significant financial, reputational, and operational risks.
What steps can I take to prepare for PCI DSS compliance if I’ve never done it before?
For SMBs with limited resources or in-house expertise, navigating PCI DSS compliance can seem daunting – which is why having a trusted, reputable QSA to streamline the compliance process can be valuable from the outset.
Either way, you need to begin by identifying your current card payment processes, technologies, and channels (e-commerce, telephone, or face to face). This step is essential for understanding how payment data flows through your organisation and which systems are involved. Once identified, explore how to optimise these processes, such as outsourcing payment processing, adopting payment terminals with advanced encryption (such as a P2PE solution), implementing network segmentation to isolate cardholder data systems, and consolidating payment channels to minimise the number of systems subject to compliance. Finally, conduct a gap analysis to highlight where the compliance gaps are. Once all necessary changes are implemented, your QSA can validate your compliance through a formal assessment.
These steps not only simplify the compliance journey but also provide additional benefits such as modernising your payment technologies, reducing cyber risks, and lowering compliance costs and efforts, by reducing your cardholder data environment. Proactively addressing PCI DSS requirements helps SMBs to enhance security while focusing resources on business growth.
How can PCI DSS compliance help my business stay ahead of fraudsters and protect against cyber threats?
PCI DSS compliance equips businesses with robust security measures to safeguard against the ever-evolving tactics of fraudsters and cybercriminals. For SMBs, which are often perceived as easier targets due to more limited security resources and expertise, PCI DSS provides a structured and proven approach to help mitigate cyber security risks and enhance overall security.
While fraudsters are typically considered to be external to the organisation, these can also be employees, especially in environments with high personnel turnover and/or limited accountability. PCI DSS helps to address this risk by enforcing strict access controls including electronic badges and CCTV cameras (in high risk and high-volume environments), multi-factor authentication, prohibiting sharing of passwords, and logging of user activities. These measures reduce the likelihood of unauthorised access to sensitive information, whether from external attackers or internal actors.
Regular security testing, including vulnerability scans and penetration tests, are another critical component of PCI DSS controls. These proactive assessments help identify weaknesses in your systems before attackers can exploit them.
By adhering to PCI DSS standards, businesses can protect not only cardholder data but also personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive company data such as trade secrets, price lists, intellectual property, contracts, and more. The standard promotes and expects best practices for managing IT infrastructure and processes, fostering a culture of security that extends beyond compliance requirements and is embedded in the very fabric of an organisation’s daily operations.
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