Facts Concerning The PCI DSS Program
The PCI DSS system is governed by the PCI DSS council that sets rules and regulations so that all merchants will have a consistent set of security measures in place. These rules and regulations make the cardholder more secure and they also protect the issuing financial institution from fraudulent charges.
Having the safety protocols required by the council in place when you will be dealing with the credit card information of customers is mandatory. The first thing that you have to do is build a secure network to use when obtaining or transmitting customer data. A secure firewall will need to be in place to stop hackers and viruses from breaching the security of your network. Systems need to be password protected.
You will need to encrypt any data belonging to a cardholder when you are transmitting it, or when there is a possibility of someone other than the owner seeing the data. It is crucial that this information be encrypted to help reduce the number of identity thefts that occur.
You will need strong control measures in place to determine if the person, or computer, requesting access to a cardholder's information has the authority to do so. This means that each cardholder will need to have a private identification number and password established.
You will need good malware protection in the form of antivirus software established on your system. The antivirus program that you have will need to be top of the line and it will need to be regularly run to detect any possible intrusions. This is a critical part of the protection of information.
You need to test the security of your system on a regular basis to see if it has been breached, or if there is something else you can do to stop it from being breached. You are guarding very important data inside your system and you need to treat that data like it is highly important.
You need to track all requests for cardholder information, especially when the request comes from an unverified system. When a new system requests information regarding one of the cardholders you must go through every security protocol you have in place in order to stop an unauthorized individual from accessing the sensitive information.
The program is not perfect, and many critics say that the PCI DSS program is nothing more than some basic security that does not deter theft. The truth is that the program does help to reduce the amount of people who have their identities stolen each year. The program does help to reduce the number of charges made to accounts by unauthorized users. The program also allows the merchant to prove who made a charge when charges are disputed.
PCI DSS is a program established to help merchants control the information they have concerning the finances of their clients. The PCI DSS is set up to allow the information of credit cardholders to be kept secure and out of the hands of unauthorized individuals. You can click here for more.