PCI (payment card industry) compliance may not be a term you hear frequently as a small business owner. However, it has significant impact to the level of risk your business assumes in payment processing if you accept debit cards and credit cards from customers as a form of payment.
PCI (payment card industry) compliance may not be a term you hear frequently as a small business owner. However, it has significant impact to the level of risk your business assumes in payment processing if you accept debit cards and credit cards from customers as a form of payment.
Despite that media headlines tend to focus on large-scale data breaches that impact major retailers and government entities — and the millions of customers whose data may be compromised when such a breach occurs — small businesses are especially at risk for a payment security breach. In fact, experts estimate more than 60% of security infringements target small- to medium-sized businesses. Often, smaller businesses are targeted simply because they are perceived as “low-hanging fruit” by hackers who presume (often, correctly) that a small operation won’t have the suitable security standards in place that make it difficult for thieves to access sensitive payment data that they can use to commit further fraud.
Though your business is not legally required to adhere to the security standards that determine PCI compliance, the cost of not following its mandates can be overwhelming. If your business is a victim of a breach and the subsequent investigation determines your payment security and point-of-sale processes are not PCI compliant, you could face upward of thousands of dollars in costs associated with the aftermath of the breach, including accountability for the re-issuance of customer payment cards, fines, fees and potential lawsuits.
PCI Compliance from BluePay financial institution payment processing.
In this presentation (click the image above & it will open in a new tab), we’ll take a closer look at how PCI compliance relates directly to your business, and provide some helpful parameters to help you identify which PCI-compliance standards your business should adhere to based, on the channels in which you sell, and your annual credit and debit card transaction bulk.
We’ll explore why some security measures normally presumed to ensure a safe transaction environment may not be adequate to prevent a payment security breach — and why relying on these tools isn’t synonymous with PCI compliance.
We’ll review why PCI-compliant security standards change frequently — and provide tips on how to conduct vulnerability scans within your business to ensure the highest level of security during transaction processing.
Finally, we’ll recommend best practices small businesses owners can leverage to reduce exposure to unnecessary security risks when it comes to point-of-sale procedures and internal processes staff must follow to reduce the risk of a physical or cyber breach. We’ll also suggest some resources to help you identify qualified PCI-compliant partners that can help you conduct network security audits, and guide your business in performing comprehensive vulnerability scans to identify potential areas for improvement. These are based on the latest iteration of PCI-compliance standards set forth by the Payment Security Council.
While making sense of PCI compliance can be overwhelming to a business of any size, our mission is to help small business owners understand why following this set of standards is so important to protecting against risk. Ultimately, BluePay is committed to simplifying the process of managing your payment security to ensure PCI compliance.
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