All personal information entered by customers in your network is considered sensitive data. Therefore, they should have the assurance that every transaction with your store is secure.
PCI-DSS provides standards that companies need to follow to ensure a safe credit card transaction. Its main purpose is to reduce the risk of data loss.
The number of ways data could be hacked has multiplied over the years, so your business should make sure that data information shared with your organization is always protected.
PCI-DSS compliance definition
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a set of security measures created to make sure that the companies who accept, store and transmit credit card data could manage to give their clients a protected environment.
PCI-DSS has multiple levels of compliance according to the number of transactions a business deals with annually.
The highest level of compliance on this list is referred to as PCI-DSS Level 1. These are companies processing over 6 million card transactions per year.
Importance of PCI-DSS compliance
Valuable information of customers are being handled and exchanged during transactions. Being PCI-DSS compliant makes your business appear trustworthy to your clients.
It can also help with negotiating with different banks as they would know that you take the security of your data and credit information seriously.
While compliance is not a strict requirement, it is important for businesses to pay attention to this as it allows you to protect your employees, your clients and your brand.
Further, here is a list of other reasons why you should apply for a PCI-DSS compliance certificate:
Business data security
While you are spending money and time on the physical security of your business, are you also paying an equal amount of attention to the protection of your digital information?
Between malware threats, remote-access attacks and other forms of hacking, it is important to take the proper precautions to keep your computers, networks and servers secure.
The whole purpose of PCI-DSS is to protect card data from hackers and thieves.
By following this standard, you can keep your data secured, avoid costly data breaches and protect the information of your customers and employees.
Customer confidence boost
Do you think that a customer would visit a store where it was likely that their credit card information would get stolen? Of course not.
Customer confidence can affect your business’ profitability. People are less likely to shop for your products or services if they don’t feel that you are keeping their personal information safe and secure.
Should you experience data breach, customers would lose trust in your ability to protect their data. Eventually, they would also stop supporting your business.
Getting PCI-DSS compliant shows your customers that you are serious about their data security and you are taking every precaution to keep it safe.
Security standard
There are companies who don’t know where to begin when it comes to information security.
Following PCI-DSS provides a strong foundation for ensuring that your data is under strict protection.
It presents specific rules for different businesses, depending on their size, types, and methods of storing data. This makes it easy to prevent, or at least reduce, data breaches.
Avoid fines and lawsuits
Should a breach happen, not only will your business be left to deal with the loss of data.
Fines and lawsuits will also be presented to you from customers and organizations that you are in transaction with.
If you are PCI-DSS compliant, you can curtail these fines and the amount of lawsuits and liability your company may acquire.
Reduces the cost of data breach
Data breaches cost a lot – in terms of money and more importantly, customer confidence.
You have to replace credit cards, pay fines, pay compensation to the customers and deal with investigation costs and audits.
Getting compliant with PCI-DSS will help you reduce these costs by preventing these breaches from happening in the first place.
