PCI compliance is an industry-standard set to keep sensitive payment data safe. Any business that handles credit or debit cardholder data must achieve PCI compliance. It was created by a council of major credit card providers – the PCI Security Standards Council, or PCI SSC – to help prevent credit and debit card data theft.

Unsure what exactly you need to know about PCI Compliance? Here’s a crash course on the PCI Data Security Standard, including the most cost-effective path to securing cardholder data, PCI compliance best practices and benefits, what it takes to get PCI certified, and much more.

Do you know how long it takes to become PCI compliant?

Fulfilling all the requirements spelled out in the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a complicated process with a ton of moving pieces.

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you already know what PCI is and you may also have some inclination that it can be a pain in the you-know-what, too. Just how severe that pain can be is something else altogether.

Do you own your data?
Your journey of payments transformation and innovation starts and ends with data ownership. Access to your data is essential.

Secure Your E-commerce Transactions for Compliance and Monetize the Value of Your Data

As you consider how to collect payments for your e-commerce business, you will also have to consider which form of payments to accept. The most widely accepted form of payment for e-commerce is card payment. As a result, you’ll have to determine how to collect card payment information in a PCI compliant manner.

Have you ever considered the relationship between the PCI DSS QSA and your business? When you are looking to become PCI DSS compliant and protect your consumer’s sensitive data, your Qualified Security Assessor becomes invaluable. Not only does a PCI QSA conduct your PCI DSS audit, but they are also the only person capable of providing you with a Report on Compliance (RoC).

So, you’re a small business owner with a startup that needs to demonstrate compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Regardless of your business type, if your organization needs to become PCI compliant, that means you plan on operating on cardholder data and you have a responsibility to protect that sensitive credit card information.

Is your organization connecting to a payment gateway, processor, or other financial institution – like FIS or I2C – that requires you to use ISO8583 to handle payment messaging?

If so, you likely already know that your business needs to achieve some form of PCI compliance in order to handle the sensitive data contained within those messages.

These days, it seems that companies are having to navigate increasingly complex data compliance regulations. From following PCI DSS rules to maintaining HIPAA, GDPR, and CCPA compliance, the complicated web of global regulatory frameworks for data protection just keeps getting more and more tangled.

The next era of data security is already upon us, and it involves washing our hands of sensitive user data entirely.

Imagine a world where your business doesn’t have to worry about managing its own Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance, simply because sensitive cardholder data never passes through your systems in the first place.

It’s a concept we call Zero Data.

The hard-to-face reality is that billions of personal records are exposed each year. A commonly used, yet incomplete solution, is tokenization. Tokenizing sensitive data does not eliminate the need to achieve and certify PCI DSS compliance.
In order to completely descope from PCI, a business can partner with a data custodian (VGS) that handles 100% of data capture and vaulting – removing any compliance risk and completely avoiding data leaks.

Learn how you can make sure that your company’s cardholder data environment (CDE) is compliant with PCI DSS.

Storing PCI cardholder data can make business much easier, for both you and your customers. Unfortunately, stored cardholder data puts your business at risk of a data breach - which is why the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was put in place.

Ensuring a company’s cardholder data environment (CDE) is compliant with PCI standards is no easy task, however, and often requires unanticipated additional resources and ongoing efforts to maintain.

We’re excited to announce that we’ve partnered with our friends at Netlify to develop an add-on that effortlessly and securely collects data via webforms.

Very Good Security, Inc. (VGS), a global leader in secure cloud services, data protection, and compliance, announced today that its data centers and cloud infrastructure have successfully completed its annual PCI DSS 3.2 compliance.

PCI Compliance, a Modern Approach: Audit Scope Reduction

Companies who stay within PCI scope when handling cardholder data have to deal with high maintenance costs and lengthy compliance certification processes - which is why many businesses seek to reduce their scope.