3 Components Of The Pci Dss

Running a business often means looking at all of the regulations and rules that must be followed in order to avoid legal troubles, and if you're interested in doing any type of direct commerce where you'll be handled customer information, you will need to be aware of the PCI DSS. This is a set of industry standard rules that lay out exactly what you must do in order to remain PCI compliant. Failure to maintain compliance can result in substantial fees for your company, and these rules are in effect no matter what size your company is. This means that even new business owners must be aware of the PCI DSS in order to make better decisions. Thankfully, there are essentially three components of the PCI DSS that you need to be aware of in order to protect your business and your customers.
The first component to be aware of is shielding customer information from start to finish. This is usually accomplished by incorporating strong encryption into your company's e-commerce infrastructure. While this may sound like an investment, it's absolutely critical in order to stay PCI compliant.

The next component that you will need to be aware of is focused on implementing and maintaining strong access control measures. This means that you will need to make sure that only people that have a serious need-to-know actually have access to confidential data. Setting up user accounts is recommended as long as strong passwords are enforced. This means that you will want to stress to your users that they must not use any password that contains words that can be found in a dictionary. This is because it’s very easy to break those passwords with specialized software. There is also a physical aspect to this requirement in the PCI DSS, given that you will also need to make sure that a very limited number of people have access to the raw cardholder data. For example, there is not a need for every employee in the company to actually have access to cardholder data.

The final component that you will want to pay close attention to is regular monitoring and testing of all network resources. While it’s true that there are definitely plenty of other PCI DSS requirements that need to be addressed other than these three, regular monitoring and tracking is absolutely critical in order to make sure that any vulnerabilities are quickly addressed before they can be exploited to create security breaches. It’s no secret that security breaches are very costly, so anything that can be done in order to maintain security is worth doing in order to avoid the consequences of being compromised. Regular testing brings any weaknesses in the system to light, and a routine should be developed immediately in order to give your business the true security it deserves.

Overall, security is a fast-changing subject that requires close attention; the PCI DSS is something that should be studied carefully in order to make sure that the requirements within it are completely understood. If you take the time to make sure that you have this covered, you will be one step closer to a truly secure and PCI compliant system!