Credit Card Security Requirements for Merchants

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Security Issues You Must Address as an Online Merchant

While every merchant can certainly enjoy the benefits of being able to accept credit cards for their business, the customer also benefits from it, and can benefit even more from having a secure web gateway. So much shopping is done online these days, and it will continue to rapidly increase, if your customers are able to enjoy secure shopping carts. Here are a few things you need to know about the new security requirements recently mandated by law for credit card gateways.

The Twelve New Legal Demands

As of June 30, 2005, the major credit card companies, which includes Discover, Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and a few others, came to a mutual agreement and created the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standard for security. Their overall goal was to be able to demand that any e-commerce merchant be able to protect their clients personal data when making purchases - especially to be able to hide the credit card information.

The Demands

The principles that are involved deals with credit card security requirements for merchants and they cover twelve basic areas. Here they are condensed, and in summary form:

Establish a firewall to secure the network, and use non-vendor supplied defaults for your system passwords
Protect your cardholder's personal information on your database, and use encryption for transmission of information.
Create a safe environment for your client's date by using up-to-date antivirus software, and applications to secure the data.
Limit access to customers data through allowing only those who need-to-know; give each person with access a unique ID; grant access only to cardholder information.
Keep an eye on your network by monitoring all access, and by regularly testing the security systems.
Maintain a policy dealing with your Information Security.

The Possible Penalties

In order get companies to want to move quickly into this direction, the rules of the PCI carry some "bite" to them, if not followed. The rules do apply to all retailers, processors of payments, and financial institutions. Basically, if you store any data dealing with credit cards, then you are included. The penalties can go up as high as half-a-million dollars per incident. The determining factor seems to be that of the size of the corporation and the amount of data compromised. And it should go without saying that the credit card gateway for that company will probably be revoked - depending on circumstances. It should also be noted that those who refuse to comply with these policies of the PCI, will also lose their privileges, too.

Continue to: Address Verification Service as Security Measure

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