More businesses are working with IT support firms in Fort Lauderdale to integrate technology into their processes. Today, most companies and consumers are using credit and debit card payments as opposed to cash in their transactions. As much as the mode of exchange is convenient, it has a dark side: data breach.
Research by the Identity Theft Resource Center shows that card data breaches had by 2018 exceeded 1244, leading to the exposure of card details of over 64.4 million cards. Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards are there to ensure that the cardholders’ data is protected.
Businesses handling credit card transactions and information are expected to comply with the following PCI security standards:
- Protecting Any Cardholder Data that You Store
- Installing a Firewall Configuration
- Encryption of the Transmission of Cardholder Data Across Open, Public Networks
- Use and Regularly Update Antivirus Software
- Limiting Access to Cardholder Data
In PCI data security standards, there is a need for businesses to protect stored payment cardholder data. The rules provide cardholder data protection methods, which include hashing, masking, tokenization, encryption, and truncation. All the mentioned methods ensure that the stored data is unreadable, even if it gets stolen.
With the help of IT support firms in Fort Lauderdale, you are required to install and maintain a firewall to protect the cardholders’ data. The firewall has to be configured for both inward and outward traffic, and with different wireless networks. This ensures that as data goes in and out of your network, it remains protected. Firewall configuration also ensures connections between untrusted networks are restricted.
The role of the firewall is to avert security threats by scanning all network traffic and blocking untrusted networks from accessing the systems in the cardholder data environment.
To prevent man-in-the-middle attacks when transmitting cardholder data across open networks, encryption is necessary. Strong encryption and authentication protocols should be applied before transferring data from one place to another. This ensures that there are no vulnerabilities for malicious attackers to exploit and get access to the cardholder data environment.
Businesses handling cardholder data are expected to do regular updates on their antivirus software. You should deploy antivirus software on personal computers and servers which are known to be affected by malware. Businesses are also required to ensure that antivirus mechanisms are running actively and cannot be disabled. The antivirus software should also be kept current through regular updates.
Businesses need to control and restrict access to cardholder data unless it is explicitly allowed. This means that access to data should only be to persons whose jobs require such access.
If you are a business owner handling cardholder data, you need to be aware of the PCI data security standards. Failure to this may attract hefty fees, penalty, or even the termination of your card processing account. With the help of IT support firms in Fort Lauderdale, you should be able to fulfill the compliance requirements. For more information on how IT solutions can help you protect cardholder data, contact us at Nexxen Technologies today.