The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) are a set of 12 regulations developed jointly by Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express to prevent consumer data theft and reduce online fraud. Compliance with these standards is mandatory for any organization that stores, transmits or processes credit card transactions. This sweeping requirement means all merchants; service providers and payment card network members must be compliant if they wish to continue accepting payments with those credit card types. Penalties for non-compliance can be substantial and include increased processing fees, fines of up to $550,000 and suspension of the ability to process transactions.

The regulations, aimed at establishing common processes and security practices for handling card holder data, consist of 12 requirements organized into 6 categories.

• Build and Maintain a Secure Network
• 1. Install and Maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data
• 2. Do not use vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords and other security parameters
• Protect Card Holder Data
• 3. Protect cardholder data
• 4. Encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open public networks
• Maintain a Vulnerability Management Program
• 5. Use and regularly update anti-virus software
• 6. Develop and maintain secure systems and applications
• Implement Strong Access Control
• 7. Restrict access to cardholder data by business need-to-know
• 8. Assign a unique ID to each person with computer access
• 9. Restrict physical access to cardholder data
• Regularly Monitor and Test Networks
• 10. Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data
• 11. Regularly test security systems and processes
• Maintain an Information Security Policy
• 12. Maintain a policy that addresses information security

Any merchant or service provider that accepts card payments or processes card data must be compliant with all 12 requirements as stated above. However, the validation requirements demanded of a particular merchant are dependent on its annual transactional volume.

Quarterly External Scans shall be performed for all merchants, regardless of transactional volume on all externally facing IP addresses. The scans will test the merchant network for vulnerabilities then provide the merchant with a detailed report of any security holes ranked according to severity. To pass the scan criteria, all vulnerabilities with a severity of 3 or over must be remediate by the merchant.

Although the requirements are set by the PCI Security Standards Council, it is the responsibility of the financial institution that provides the merchant services to enforce them. Therefore, both the report confirming a merchant has passed the Quarterly External Scan and the Annual Self Assessment Questionnaire need to be submitted to your merchant bank. Your merchant bank will then report back to the Payment Card Industry that your company is PCI Compliant.