What is PCI DSS?

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements to ensure the security of processing and transferring payment data of bank cardholders.

The standard was developed by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC), established by international payment systems such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, JCB and Discover.

PCI DSS requirements apply to merchants, banks, providers of all kinds of services, retail stores, call centers, payment gateways and other organizations whose activities are related to the processing, transmission and storage of data on payment cardholders

What is PCI compliance and its benefits

1. Your customers will trust you – this is almost the main condition for successful profitable e-commerce. Customers expect you as a seller to ship all the items they paid for, hand them over to them, and process payment details. You should know that your business will grow with a good reputation, which is ensured by meeting international payment standards.
2. Saves your data from leakage. When building an IT infrastructure where you work with your customers’ sensitive data, you need to be even more rigorous about data storage and management requirements. Being in the PCI DSS industry, merchants are required to use stronger brand walls and special encryption. They also cannot store customer and card data. For these reasons, any enterprise that uses PCI becomes less attractive to hackers. Firstly, they will spend more time than usual, and secondly, they will not receive the data they are looking for.
3. What is PCI-DSS? It is when your enterprise meets world-class standard. This standard was an initiative of five leading credit institutions, which had the goal of providing a high level of protection for buyers and sellers, as well as ensuring that customer data is properly handled so that it is processed, transferred, and stored securely. The point of PCI DSS is for you to become one of those merchants that prioritizes the security of their customers and the safety of the data they share.
4. According to the PCI DSS security rules, each enterprise must have several levels of security that are configured through firewalls. You must also have current threat analytics in order to urgently monitor the presence of holes or outdated updates in your network – you need a good IT security strategy. To meet such requirements, you can use endpoint protection or advanced firewalls, or vulnerability auditing.
5. This is the first step towards other opportunities that will make your company as attractive as possible for cooperation. There are 4 levels of compliance and no matter where you are, the fact that you already have PCI DSS means that you are moving in the right direction to ensure that your customers receive secure services. For example, as part of PCI DSS compliance, you're also complying with GDPR or ISO in terms of the limited amount of data that you store.

Is PCI compliance required?

It is mandatory for those who work with large issuing banks, such as the well-known Mastercard or Visa, as well as Discover or American Express. Compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (which PCI DSS stands for) is also required if your company performs any operations with customer data: collecting, maintaining or transmitting it. It doesn't matter what size your enterprise is, how global the transactions are, or how often they occur. In short, you must comply with this standard in any case where a customer's credit card information is linked to your secure network.

What to do if your business is not PCI compliant?

Failure to comply with PCI DSS requirements can result in significant financial losses, especially if your network experiences a data breach. Non-compliance with the standard can result in various fines or even a ban on processing credit card data. Both outcomes can cause significant, if not fatal damage to your business.

When the requirements of the standard are met, it means that customers can be sure of the security of their data. However, if there is any data leakage, the consequences can be severe, including:

• refusal to accept and process credit cards;
• imposition of sanctions on your enterprise;
• investigation, inspections, and audits from the FTC;
• loss of momentum profit;
• loss of employees.

After a data breach, companies may have to bear additional costs, such as notifying affected individuals, issuing new cards, and covering legal expenses. These expenses are only the beginning, and the overall impact can be far-reaching.