For anyone working in the ecommerce solutions industry or anyone looking into creating an ecommerce website, PCI compliancy will probably they have heard a little about. Although it was launched back in September 2006, it is only over the past 6 months that credit card companies have been using them more to ensure the transactions are more secure.
PCI compliancy stands for the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which is a list of requirements and standards to ensure the companies that use payment transactions maintain a secure environment. Companies that process, store or transmit credit card information and payments will usually have to go through this compliancy with their credit card provider. This basically means that anyone merchant that has a Merchant ID will need to comply.
The PCI DSS is run and managed by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) which is an open global forum, which looks at the ongoing development, enhancement, storage, dissemination and implementation of security standards for account data protection. Their main aim is to enhance payment account data security by increasing education and awareness of the PCI Security Standards. The organization was created by many of the major global credit card companies such as American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB International, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, Inc. They are also the companies who are responsible for enforcing the compliance and not the payment card industry council.
The compliance can be performed either internally or externally and it can also depend on the volume of card transactions the company is handling. Businesses handling large amounts of transaction must have their compliance assessed by an independent assessor known as the Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) as their challenges are different to organisations with a small amount of transactions. These businesses handling smaller volumes must go through the Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ), which is a self-certification service.
At Advansys ecommerce solutions and ecommerce website design we can take care of this PCI compliancy for you by fully facilitating the process. This includes making sure that the Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) is filled in fully as well as converse with both the credit card company and the online security company to ensure that the process goes as smoothly possible. Although the compliancy is relatively new, we have experience in the compliancy process, which means we know exactly what to do and the time it takes to get the compliancy sorted during the website build process.
