In recent years, electronic payments have become an essential part of everyday life. Thus, Data protection is crucial when it comes to online payment methods and payments processing, as fraud and card data theft frequently occur in the Net. This issue brought the largest card networks to team up and create the PCI council. They elaborated the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard that is a set of complex security measures, providing a full card data protection. The user’s sensitive data, engaged in financial transactions, may often be vulnerable to cyber-attacks. So, any organization dealing with electronic payments, in particular: acceptance, processing, transmission and storage of cardholders’ payment data should comply with the PCI requirements.
What are the PCI compliance essential requirements? What is PCI scope?
PCI DSS provisions cover different aspects of security, like:
- The improvement and ongoing development of a secure network infrastructure
- Cardholder data protection by encryption and other methods
- Update system components monitoring
- Antivirus software check-up
- Access control and its differentiation
- Regular security systems testings
- Information security policy
The infrastructure security should be covered by the PCI standard requirements in different aspects and levels. The high security level must be regularly maintained by both employees and partners of any organization. It is vital when a business deals with the processing, transmission or storage of customers’ card data.
Thus, the PCI scope is the compilation of processes, people, and technologies, providing the compliance standards. The necessary coverage for PCI DSS assessment may differ, depending on a company.
Why is PCI compliance so important?
Card data leaks and fraud have significantly increased with the exponential growth in online shopping worldwide. Quite often, some convenient, one-click online payments on e-commerce sites can be a great danger to a cardholder, as they do not follow the necessary regulations to provide a relevant layer of security.
The integration of a payment gateway without PCI DSS compliance may incur a lot of risks. For instance, customers’ sensitive data may leak to the third parties that will use it for their malevolent purposes. That’s why PCI compliance should be your number 1 priority. In case you ignore PCI DSS requirements, your reputation and security may be exposed to a risk.
A PCI DSS standard is universally applicable to payment service providers, internet acquiring companies, and payment systems. The same goes for payment gateways, responsible for protecting transaction details.
Every merchant who values his reputation should ensure the maximum security of the customers’ card data. This can be done by choosing a payment gateway provider with a validated PCI DSS compliance.
What are the PCI compliance levels?
Any company, dealing with the transmission, processing or storage of the payment information must comply with the rigorous PCI DSS security requirements and pass an attestation. Moreover, this company should later pass internal and external security audits yearly. These procedures help to define if the business is really complying with the security requirements or its PCI DSS certification is a fake. In case any security violations occur, a company will be fined with a significant amount of money.
There are different PCI levels. They depend on the number of transactions which an organization process every year:
- Level 1: 6,000,000+
- Level 2: from 1,000,000 to 6,000,000
- Level 3: from 20,000 to 1,000,000
- Level 4: up to 20,000
PCI level 1 compliance validation may only be performed by an independent auditor — Qualified Security Assessors (QSA).
What procedures are there in PCI compliance?
- Company’s information infrastructure extensive audit
- Recommendations
- The list of regulatory documents, necessary to comply with the standard
- Consulting support during implementation.
A business will also have to confirm their compliance with other PCI levels by an internal ISA audit.
Who needs a PCI compliant payment gateway?
- Banks
- Merchants
- Online retailers
- Payment systems
- Payment processors
- Payment providers
- Acquirers
- Other institutions involved in data processing.
The PCI Security Standards Council imposes an obligation to every company, engaged in data processing, to meet all the PCI DSS requirements. Otherwise, such a company may not be considered reliable, and customers won’t trust their personal data to it. Thus, the businesses employ PCI compliant gateways in transaction processing to keep all the data encrypted and secure. If a company wants a perfect reputation and the best feedback from its customers, it should always prevent payment fraud by a PCI compliant payment gateway integration.
How can TODA help?
When it comes to transferring or storing sensitive bank card data, both cardholders and merchants must understand the importance of the security issue. TODA meets the strictest requirements of PCI DSS level.
Our team closely monitor every transaction to protect businesses and their customers from potential card data leak and fraud. By ensuring the highest data protection of the consumers’ banking card data, you provide the fullest security and the best user experience for your customers. TODA helps you to eliminate the need of PCI compliance because you are going to already have a compliant, fully protected payment processing system working.