PCI Compliance Checklist: Find Out If You are Compliance

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What is PCI Compliance? How can companies benefit from being PCI compliant?

PCI DSS stands for “Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.” It’s a set of requirements for companies to ensure that online payment processing is safe and secure. Complying is not only a requirement but also a perfect investment for your company’s reputation. Below we will discuss how PCI DSS compliance can benefit your company’s security:

Decrease the Risk of Data Breaches

Companies are no longer a physical space, so you can’t lock all the doors and ensure your business security. Your business data can be accessed and hacked anytime if you don’t care about your virtual place security. With PCI compliance, you will get “virtual locks” that will protect your company and customers’ data from external attacks․

Earn Customer Loyalty

Would your customers patron your company if they know there is a risk of their card information breach? Customers may not probably understand what PCI compliance is until they experience a data breach. Your customer is the key to your success so make them feel confident that you’re keeping their data safe unless less likely to spend money with your business if they don’t feel the confidence of their data security.

Avoid Fines

Data breaches can cost you a lot of money and customer trust. Ignoring the importance of becoming PCI compliant can cause costs of replacing credit cards, paying fines and customers’ compensations. The average costs of a data breach can range from $77,000 to $875,000. Moreover, it will result in losing customer loyalty.

2020 PCI Compliance Checklist

Becoming a PCI Compliance sometimes can seem quite a complicated and boring process․ Having a checklist guide to refer to will allow you to complete all the necessary steps to become PCI compliant. Your company should rely on the PCI DSS audit checklist to ensure it meets each requirement. Requirements depend on the volume of transactions so you should monitor the transaction to define your compliance level. We have created a short checklist of PCI self-assessment to make this process easier for you. Read the points carefully and make sure you haven’t missed any essential steps։

1. Install and maintain a firewall

To meet PCI requirements, install a strong firewall to protect your network. A firewall helps to block unauthorized access to your network, so it’s a key factor for protecting cardholders’ data.

2. Avoid using vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords

Compliance with PCI requirements means generating unique passwords. Include lower-case, numbers, capital letters, numbers, and symbols to make passwords secure.

3. Protect stored data

The customers, that put trust in you need to make sure their data is stored securely. Security measures should include successful password policies, locked servers, authentication protocols and more.

4․ Encrypt cardholder data transmission

Protecting stored data is a strong requirement for complying with PCI standards, but one can’t ignore the importance of protecting the transferred data. If the cardholder data is being sent through an open network, you should ensure to encrypt it.

5. Install and update anti-virus software

To comply with PCI standards and protect customer data, your company should use anti-virus software. Always make sure that your anti-virus system isn’t up-to-date.

6․ Restrict physical access to cardholder data

As an entrepreneur, you should hire the employees you can trust. However, you should restrict access to your customers’ data even for employees to minimize the risk of an internal data breach.

7. Set unique IDs to all users

Setting a unique ID to each user is a simple but essential step for PCI compliance. When you assign a unique ID and password, so you can monitor who accesses stored data.

8. Manage access to cardholder data

If you want to keep your cardholders’ data secure, you need to invest in a tracking system. Any strange or unexpected access by employees should be taken into consideration immediately.