PCI Security Standards

[WENDY KLOS]

PCI Security Standards Council

https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/

The PCI Security Standards Council’s mission is to enhance payment account data security by fostering broad adoption of the PCI Security Standards. The organization was founded by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa International. The PCI DSS is a multifaceted security standard that includes requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other critical protective measures. The Payment Card Industry (PCI) has initiated a collaborative effort to address common industry security criteria, including the security-related aspects of PIN entry devices (PEDs). The PCI Data Security Standard Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) is a validation tool intended to assist merchants and service providers in self-evaluating their compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

[Ilango]

Hi Wendy,

Excellent material.

I just looking for some certification courses in PCI security. Appreciate if you can recommend some best certification program?

Cheers,
Ilango

[Alex Crittenden]

Thanks for posting the 'home source' of PCI data. The organization I work for (NetSPI) is heavily involved in PCI within the retail and payments industries and are always best able to assist merchants and service providers (and software vendors) that are well informed and understand both the intent and letter of the regulations. Looking to the council for information gets you both of these things - some of the 'compliance' companies out in the market focus on the letter of the law without worrying too much about why the standards are in place....

I will throw our web address out there as well as my email - we are putting on some webinars both pre- and post-NRF about PCI and PA-DSS and it's open to anyone that is looking to understand how the standards are impacting strategic IT decisions within retail and payments. There are also some whitepapers currently in final draft that will be going out as well if anyone is interested and would find the information helpful.

Thanks and here's the info. - www.netspi.com and my email address - [e-mail].

Alex Crittenden

[WENDY KLOS]

As far as what I have seen with PCI security standards there has been a big increase in retailers efforts to become compliant and protect customer information. One VERY large retailer T.J. Maxx corp which also owns several smaller retail companies went on record a few years ago saying that customer data integrity had been compromised which frightened a lot of customers as well as other retailers. I have been involved in the review of customer data kept within a company (name, address, credit card # etc) and have taken actions to reduce/remove unnecessary or old info, better encription on data that needs to be kept as well as separating sensitive data into different areas so that a customers' information would not be stored in one specific area but rather spread out in different programs to make it more difficult to piece together.