However, all merchants and service providers that experience data breaches that compromise payment card data must undergo an annual on-site PCI DSS compliance audit. All merchants and service providers that accept, process, store or transmit credit or debit card data must comply with the PCI DSS. This information security framework includes 12 requirements and approximately 400 guidelines. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is a proprietary standard for information security.

Payment card industry compliance is a mandate for credit card companies to ensure the security of credit card transactions in the payments industry. Payment card industry compliance refers to the technical and operational standards that companies follow to secure and protect credit card data provided by cardholders and transmitted as part of card processing transactions. The requirements set forth pci dss requirements by the PCI SSC are both operational and technical in nature, and the primary goal of these standards is always to protect cardholder data. These credit card companies – American Express, Discover Financial Services, Visa, Mastercard and JCB International – have formed a council that has developed a set of data security standards to ensure the protection of payment card data and prevent card fraud.

With the help of your team of quality security officers, it is important to review and assess your corporate policies, systems management, software design, and network architecture. Each of these steps will ensure PCI DSS compliance and the implementation of effective security measures to protect cardholder data. Unlike a PCI assessment, which merchants can perform themselves, a PCI DSS audit can only be performed by a qualified security assessor. If you are facing an audit, it is likely to be a large merchant who is voluntarily undergoing an audit or a small merchant who has been required to undergo an audit due to a recent data breach at their store. These audits are mandated by the major credit card companies, and failure to comply can have serious consequences for your business.

This first requirement ensures that service providers and merchants maintain a secure network by properly configuring a firewall and routers, if necessary. Firewalls restrict incoming and outgoing network traffic based on rules and criteria configured by your organization. The PCI Standards Council is responsible for developing standards for PCI compliance. These standards apply to merchants and service providers that process credit/debit card payments.

It was created by a panel of major credit card issuers – the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) – to prevent the theft of credit and debit card data. Build and maintain firewall and router configurations that restrict inbound and outbound traffic from untrusted networks. Firewalls are devices that control computer traffic entering and leaving the organization’s network, including sensitive internal networks. Some of the largest data breaches include well-known companies such as Marriott, Equifax, Home Depot and Target. PCI DSS compliance helps mitigate risk for merchants and reduce the most common causes of payment card data breaches by implementing key security controls. To implement robust access control measures, service providers and merchants must be able to allow or deny access to cardholder data systems.

If you neglect data security in any element of the process, you risk having that information violate PCI-DSS. If you don’t track what happens during the transaction and make assumptions about your business processes, your customers’ data may be at risk. Documenting all environments where credit card data is collected and stored brings you closer to PCI compliance.