People are starting to steer towards a cashless society more and more. It’s just more practical to pay for goods using your card. However, with card payments and data comes certain risks that merchants and companies should be mindful of at all times. The good news is that there are regulatory standards that basically help regulate the industry even further.
One of the primary regulatory standards that merchants should abide by is the PCI DSS. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements that cater towards protecting consumers and their data as they make transactions using their cards.
This has been one of the regulations to abide by since its establishment in 2006. Merchants need to apply and pass a compliance assessment if they want to incorporate card transactions into their structure. Here’s how you can prepare for it for your business.
How to prepare for compliance assessment?
Preparing For Assessment
Now, a PCI assessment basically measures a businesses’ capacity to protect its clients and their data. It’s a painstaking process that’s necessary for businesses too.
The first part of the compliance sees you creating a list of your assets – software, hardware, all things that have value. This part of the PCI DSS compliance standard is necessary because it helps the commission doing the assessment understand how heavy your assets are. In doing so, they can see how much protection you need as well.
Once you’ve seen your company’s assets, it’s time to begin managing all the documents required by the commission. These documents are related to your business, and they help the checkers keep a close eye on your business’s legitimacy. It’s the easiest part of the process too.
Compliance Check
The next part of the process sees the PCI DSS check on any compliance gaps that your company or business may suffer from. Simply put, these are areas in which your business lacks. The PCI DSS will also check the possible steps you can take to ensure that your business is able to close these gaps before the assessment occurs.
This is a critical part of the process that requires a lot of your attention because any gaps that get past here are going to appear in the assessment. This means giving your employees proper training and upgrading any software or hardware flaws within the business’s structure as well.
The most important part here is the training you give to your employees as most data breaches are caused by human error.
Assessment
Once all the gaps have been filled and the structure becomes more solid and stable, it’s time for the actual assessment to happen. Assessment happens periodically to ensure that your business stays in touch with the compliance. As such, it’s important that you stay consistent with the security that you provide.
The PCI DSS standard is something you should focus on getting. It does not just protect your customers, it can also increase your company’s reputation as well. In this day and age where people prefer cashless transactions over anything else, it’s a good idea to do your best to ensure that your business stays compliant.
Businesses can improve their data protection further by using measures like a VPN (virtual private network) in addition to keeping to regulations like the PCI DSS. To ensure the best level of protection, you must choose the most secure VPN available. VPN usage is significant for protecting sensitive data from curious eyes, precisely when conducting transactions over public Wi-Fi networks. By encrypting all data traffic between the device and the VPN server, a VPN protects that any intercepted data cannot be read or phutzed with by unauthorized parties. To protect customer and business data, a VPN implementation can offer an extra layer of security.