The 2016 KPMG Consumer Loss Barometer reported recently that 20 percent of consumers would take their business elsewhere permanently from a retailer in the event of a data breach. The trust and sales from your customers, as well as your reputation are at risk through breaches in cyber security. In order to avoid a breach for your business, it is imperative that you ensure you are following Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). In the event that you and your business suffer from a breach and have not complied with these regulations, you could end up paying fines and be held liable for any incurred losses due to compromised cards. This is why pairing together your products and your services with additional data security helps to keep your business and your customers protected.
The PCI DSS are a guideline of regulations that are set in place to ensure that all companies are accepting, storing, processing, and/ or transmitting cardholder data in the safest way possible. The PCI DSS are managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is an independent body founded by the five largest credit card companies. This initiative was started by the council in 2006 as a means to better the security of transactions. The PCI Council believes that the sellers and organizations that accept credit cards hold sole responsibility for the security of customers’ transactions. With the responsibility placed solely on the sellers and organizations shoulders, it is extremely important to practice safe and preventative measures to thwart the theft of cardholder data.
If you’re using more than one independent provider to service your payment cycle, then you are more than likely sending out and storing your customers’ data between all of your different providers. This is where PCI Compliance is absolutely crucial. This pushes the responsibility onto your business for validating and supporting PCI compliance. Every time data passes between the different providers, PCI compliance regulations require that the seller guarantee that each and every piece is encrypted and safeguarded in a way that authorized parties can have access to. A self-assessment questionnaire is provided by the PCI Council that includes a checklist of their requirements.
Sterling Payment Technologies
Sterling provides merchants with a complete range of electronic payment processing services, including credit, debit, PIN debit, fleet, gift card, and electronic benefits transfer (EBT).
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