As more and more payments are made digitally, companies and customers alike rely on payment service providers to provide a secure environment for those payments. The security standards of the Payment Card Industry Standard Security Council (PCI SSC) are the industry standard for payment card security. PCI Compliance assures consumer data protection with the highest standards.
The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) was founded in 2006 as the payment card industry looked for ways to combat the rising incidence of payment fraud. Its founding members were Mastercard, Visa, American Express, JCB International, and Discover Financial Services.
These companies formed the PCI SCC in an effort to unify security standards within the payment card industry and protect customers using their services against data breaches. Membership is open to members affiliated with the payment card industry including point-of-sale vendors, merchants, banks, software developers and processors.
PIC has stringent requirements for participating members to help protect customer data including:
- Building and maintaining a secure network with a firewall configuration to protect customer data. No vendor-supplied system password defaults are to be used.
- Protection of cardholder data including encrypted transmission of data across open and public networks.
- Maintain a vulnerability management program including regular updates of anti-virus programs and development/maintenance of secure system applications.
- Implement access control measures such as restricting access to cardholder data and giving computer access only to users with unique IDs.
- Regular testing and monitoring of network access and access to cardholder data along with regular testing of security systems and processes.
- Maintain information security policy for all employees and contractors.
Protection of customer data is more important than ever before with the increased reliance of consumers on digital payments. Richmond Financial Services cares about the security of customer data. We provide secure next generation payment processing services for the heating fuels industry including electronic recurring payments. Contact us to learn more about all our payment processing solutions.
