PCI DSS

The Payment Card Industry (PCI) is a coalition of credit card companies including American Express, Discover, MasterCard and Visa. Non-compliance with the 12 requirements specified in the PCI Data Security Standards (DSS) puts your company at greater risk of a future data breach that comes with a steep financial cost as evidenced by the plethora of well publicized data breaches last year alone. Of the 12 PCI DSS requirements, it was found that 79% of failed PCI Compliance assessments were in non-compliance because of not being able to protect cardholder data via requirement 3. Thats huge.

Keeping cardholder data safe and secure is an important part of your business as well as an agreement with your payment card brands and acquirers in order to accept the credit card based payments. Compromised data has a negative impact on everyone involved. Protecting data can help:

• Improve customer relationships
• Increase overall profitability in any program
• Prevent damage to your business’s reputation

This blog is part of our series of articles that will address frequently asked questions and provide a comprehensive guide on PCI DSS requirements and compliance.

Before we talk about QSA and on site assessment process for PCI compliance, heres a quick recap of the basics on PCI DSS.

Credit cards hold a remarkable amount of cardholder data. If that data were to fall into the wrong hands, it could ruin a persons life. Now, imagine your company has a database of millions of credit cards that are unique to their cardholder. If that database were to be remotely breached via a phishing scam or hack, your entire database of payment cards could be stolen in a blink of an eye. In 2012 alone, attackers posing as legitimate service people substituted the payment devices and subsequently compromised three large retailers. It was found that 39% of organizations had been breached through insecure remote access (which was the single largest origin of compromise that organizations encountered).

Before we delve into understandingVoice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and data security on VoIP systems, heres a quick introduction to PCI DSS payment card data security standards.

The PCI Standard is mandated by the card brands and administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. The PCI security standard was created to increase controls around cardholder data to reduce credit card fraud. Validation of compliance is performed annually, either by an external Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) or by a firm specific Internal Security Assessor (ISA) that creates a Report on Compliance for organizations handling large volumes of credit card payment transactions, or by Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) for companies handling smaller volumes.

Credit and debit cards have been around since the 1850s, but werent commonplace in American wallets until the 1970s. Why? Because consumers were wary of using them due to the nonexistent security measures and legislative support that was in place at the time. Consumer complaints against this lack of regulation led to the implementation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act of 1970, the Unsolicited Credit Card Act of 1970, the Fair Credit Billing Act of 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act 1974, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act of 1977. The passing of these acts gave consumers the support and confidence to use their credit and debit cards at a merchant without having to worry about having their data stolen or being discriminated for their transactions.

Becoming a Qualified Security Assessor, commonly referred to as a QSA, is a relatively grueling process that is in line with the important role that a QSA plays. In this article, well answer what a QSA is, how you can gain QSA designation, and why using a QSA to audit your cybersecurity is something you should be already doing. This information should provide insight into the role that QSAs play in cyber-security, and allow you to assess whether outsourcing your cyber-security to a QSA designated firm is a good choice given your security needs.