When representatives from some of the world’s leading financial organisations joined together nearly ten years ago to form the PCI-DSS, it was a big step forward for online security. It was the first time that the world’s biggest names had joined together to provide a ‘one size fits all’ approach to financial security.

From then on, any business that wanted to accept money from any major banks had to abide by the PCI DSS. Today, the PCI-DSS is near enough ubiquitous in the business climate.

Read more: 5 PCI Compliance Myths

Abiding by the PCI DSS

PCI compliance isn’t actually set down in law. It’s only the financiers who have the power to punish businesses if they’ve been found to have flouted its guidelines. As a result, it can be seen by many operational managers as red tape; a series of measures that a 21st century business simply has to navigate.

But that frame of mind is a dangerous one. Viewing PCI-DSS as simply something that has to be appeased – a series of boxes for a department to tick and then neglect – neglects its actual point.

There’s more to security than PCI DSS

The PCI DSS is viewed – especially by its own council – as the bare minimum for security. On its own, the qualification doesn’t make a business secure. To get the best out of it, the PCI-DSS should be seen as a base from which a company’s security operations should be built. As well as rolling out PCI hosting solutions in your organisation, you need to think about wider safety.

After all, you want your organisation to be PCI compliant, but you also want it to be safe. Failing a PCI audit is one thing, but losing customer data is quite another.

PCI-DSS may be a very strong security standard, but at the end of the day it’s a check list. There could be security loopholes not covered by the regulation. Just like you could theoretically keep data safe while not abiding by PCI-DSS, you could also pass all its guidelines but still get stung elsewhere. So it’s important to consider wider security implications too.

Read more: 5 Simple Ways You Can Reduce Your Organisation’s PCI Scope

Security is essential – but it doesn’t have to be complicated

So what do security-conscious individuals have to do to keep their organisations safe as well as PCI compliant? It doesn’t have to be convoluted or take hours of backbreaking work. But it does require the right infrastructure and the right decision making.

You simply have to think about your company’s culture and the way that it shares information across the board.

  • How can you incorporate systems that are not only secure, but easy to use and roll out?
  • How can you avoid any unsafe security ‘loopholes’ that PCI-DSS doesn’t cover?
  • How can you encourage staff to abide by PCI and general security regulations?
  • How can you check staff are abiding by PCI-DSS?

Read more: PCI Audit Failures: 6 Reasons Why it Happens to Businesses

Only if you use the right PCI compliant secure data transfer infrastructure across an organisation can you stay PCI-compliant while also keeping your company – and your customers – safe.

Find out more about how Maytech’s PCI Compliant hosting solutions can help your business online today.

 

Read More: PCI Compliant File Sharing: Essential Requirements & Effective Compliance Strategies