The retail industry has a Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). It regulates the activity of organizations working with credit cards of the main payment systems, including Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JCB. PCI DSS consists of 12 major requirements which are divided into more than 200 sub-requirements.
The standard has an entire section on how to develop PCI DSS compliant software. Moreover, all the provisions of the standard is checked by an authorized auditor having the status of QSA (Qualified Security Assessor). He is entitled to talk to the payment gateway employee, study the system components settings, take screenshots and just see “how it works”.
All of these requirements are a serious problem for companies that have to ensure that credit card information is processed, stored and transmitted in a secure environment. If you have a network of hundreds of stores, it’s hard to have simultaneous security controls across all locations with all the requirements in place. Several services can be used to accomplish this task. Let’s take Netsurion Managed PCI as an example.
Netsurion provides comprehensive security solutions for the central office and all branches of any retail chain. In this scheme, out-of-home locations often don’t have enough resources to deploy this level of solution. A Netsurion system can be installed in any size network, from a huge franchise to a sole proprietorship shop, with no additional support costs.
Netsurion Managed PCI uses remote configuration for its cloud-managed firewalls in each store, and alerts the administrator when suspicious traffic appears. What’s important: The system can monitor the volume of all bank card traffic. A drop (as well as an increase) in volume often indicates a problem with the payment system.
The service can also detect and block unauthorized devices trying to connect to the network. When a customer’s credit card information enters the network, Netsurion helps ensure that it is transmitted only to authorized locations.