PCI Compliance refers to compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. Any business who takes credit and/or debit card payments should comply with the requirements set out by the PCI DSS, which protects the card payment information.

E-commerce websites and any other websites that allow card payment transactions must comply with the PCI DSS. The standard was developed by a group of major credit card companies, including Mastercard, American Express and Visa to help to protect their customers. This group is called the PCI SSC (Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council).

Overview Of PCI SSC Data Security Standards

The SSC promotes the PCI DSS and ensures that the standards are updated when required, to continue to keep customers protected when new challenges and potential threats are introduced. The SSC also supports merchants and service providers by offering training and assessment, as well as scanning qualifications.

PCI compliance must be validated and how this happens depends on the volume of transactions processed on an annual basis. PCI compliance is not a legal requirement, but companies that are not compliant are not able to process card transactions using the major card payment companies.

Requirements For PCI DSS Compliance

The PCI DDS has 12 requirements listed:

1. Use and Maintain Firewalls: Firewalls must be installed on the website that transactions are being made on to protect cardholder data.
2. Proper Password Protections: A proper system must be in place to protect passwords and vendor supplied defaults should not be used.
3. Protect Cardholder Data: If a business is storing any type of cardholder data, it must have adequate security measures in place to protect the cardholder data.
4.  Encrypt Transmitted Data: When data is transmitted across open, public networks, encryption software must be used to scramble data to ensure that it is not recognizable.
5. Use and Maintain Anti-Virus: Anti-virus software must be installed and maintained to help prevent malware attacks. The software or anti-virus programs must be updated when necessary to keep them effective.
6. Properly Updated Software: Businesses are required to ensure that software is updated whenever updates become available to ensure there are no security weaknesses due to updates not being implemented in time.
7. Restrict Data Access: A system should be in place to ensure that systems can only be accessed by authorized personnel, which would be people that require access to the data for essential business purposes.
8. Unique IDs for Access: Every individual who will access the payment systems and data must have a unique ID and there should be no shared or generic IDs used to access the systems.
9. Restrict Physical Access: As well as making sure that there is adequate protection from a system perspective, physical access to cardholder data must also be restricted.
10. Create and Maintain Access Logs: Whenever anyone accesses cardholder data, there must be a log of the access recorded.
11. Scan and Test for Vulnerabilities: Systems must be regularly tested for any vulnerabilities that could put data at risk and scans should be performed for any threats.
12. Document Policies: A security policy must be in place, addressing information security processes and requirements for employees and contractors.

One solution that is available to businesses is to use a comprehensive third-party data protection solution that will ensure all of these 12 requirements are met.

Advances in technology are presenting businesses with so many opportunities to implement efficiencies, reduce costs and make other improvements to deliver operational excellence. One very important type of technology solution that can give businesses an advantage over their competitors is business intelligence tools.

What Is Business Intelligence?

Business intelligence is a process where a business gathers a wide range of different types of information to help make informed decisions based on the insights that are available. The information collected is able to help with strategic decisions that will drive businesses forward

How to Use Business Intelligence

Operational data can be collected and sorted into dashboards and reports so that the information is easy to analyse and use to make decisions.

How to choose the right tool?

There are so many different types of business intelligence tools and you can use multiple tools to leverage the many benefits of gathering vital business data. The priorities will be different for each business and will depend on the type of data that is available to gather but these are the key factors to consider when choosing the right tool for your business:

• Ease of use.

 If it’s hard to use, you’re a lot less likely to use it. Tools that are difficult to use are time-consuming and frustrating and there is no need to opt for complicated tools when there are tools that are easy to use.

• Custom dashboards. 

Dashboards must be customized to your exact needs, rather than pulling information that your business does not need. Standard reports will just gather sets of information that other businesses might need but that is not important to yours.

• Predictive analysis.

 Tools that help you to plan for the future by predicting outcomes and results are invaluable in competitive markets. Being able to ask ‘what if’ will give you a better idea of what will happen in the future and what plans you need to make.

• Interactive reports. 

Once reports are generated, you should be able to drill down into specific details. You should be able to search for trends, sort report data into different sets using new parameters, and highlight data exceptions.

• Ranking reports. 

Within your reports functionality, you should be able to rank reports so that it is easy to sort data sets to reveal the best and worst-performing data sets. This feature can identify products that are not selling well, or highlight which employees are performing well, and all kinds of different rankings that will help you to make crucial business decisions or reward high-performing employees.

• Integrations. 

Another important detail to look for in business intelligence tools is the available integrations. The BI tool will be more useful to your business if it works with the systems that you already use, such as CRM, sales tools, supply chain, and financial software. Software integrations can save you lots of time and make processes work more efficiently.

With so many different types of BI solutions available, you might be struggling to decide on the right one for your business. It will help to speak to BI solution experts so that you can find the perfect BI tool for your business, based around your specific business objectives.

 Get in touch with Omreon to find the best BI solution for your business.