Ecommerce has grown into a billion-dollar industry. Just like in any other sector, e-commerce businesses face the risk of data breaches. PCI DSS compliance is essential to the e-commerce industry since it helps companies safeguard sensitive data. These regulations stipulate how companies should protect customers’ credit card data and their overall cardholder data environment.
PCI DSS standards stipulate how companies can establish internal Information Security programs and how they can be designed to meet their business needs. Likewise, companies must identify where and how cardholder data is coming from, where it’s moving to, and where it gets stored. Mapping how cardholder data moves throughout your company’s network is the first step to knowing how you can protect it.
Ecommerce PCI Compliance Checklist
For merchants to attain and maintain their compliance status, they must adhere to the six main PCI DSS requirements. All the conditions have one end goal – securing cardholder data. Here’s a quick recap of the PCI compliance checklist for e-commerce merchants.
- A firewall should be installed between the public network and your payment card data on your website. The firewall should be regularly updated.
- All devices that store or process cardholder data should never use vendor-specific passwords.
- Cardholder data shouldn’t be stored on your e-commerce website if hosted on a third-party server. If you must store cardholder data, ensure a reliable encryption technique is implemented for your server/hardware/software.
- Encryption should be used to safeguard any cardholder data that gets transmitted over public networks.
- Antivirus software should be used in all machines within your cardholder data environment. Besides, the software should be updated regularly.
- Access to cardholder data should be limited. There should also be time limitations whenever users access the cardholder data environment.
- Users who access cardholder data should have unique login credentials. Each is accountable for any unusual or unauthorized access to their credentials.
- Physical access should be restricted to areas where hardware holding cardholder data is installed.
- Access to the cardholder data environment via the company network should always be monitored.
- All systems, software, access data, monitoring data, and hardware must be regularly monitored.
- A security policy must be implemented to define all measures taken to secure the cardholder data environment.
A PCI compliance program should be part of your e-commerce company’s overall information security framework. There exists a symbiotic relationship between the two since they strengthen each other. The PCI DSS compliance program enables you to identify a set of standards that go a long way in enhancing your company’s information security framework.
PCI compliance may seem like an unattainable objective. Nonetheless, it isn’t as difficult as you might think. PCI DSS standards can be implemented across different business models. Over the years, the council has improved on the applicability, language, and definitions of the requirements. Besides, changes are continually made to improve the standards as a whole. Therefore, it’s easy to implement the PCI standard in a way that suits the business model of your e-commerce enterprise.
Most PCI standards are security policies that ought to be followed at all times and in all cases. This could be why many e-commerce entrepreneurs wrongly perceive PCI compliance as unreasonable. By complying, you’ll be putting measures in place to secure your e-commerce store. However, compliance isn’t a one-off undertaking. Instead, it’s a continuous process that doesn’t end when you gain compliance status.
One of the most-peddled myths about compliance is that a small e-commerce business doesn’t require PCI. This is false because compliance is necessary when merchants accept debit or credit card payments. It doesn’t matter whether they process one transaction at a time or a bulk of transactions.
Ensuring your e-commerce business is PCI-compliant is one of the best business decisions you can ever make. Rather than considering it an unnecessary undertaking, it would help determine PCI compliance as a beneficial process to secure your network. When you prove to clients that you proactively protect their data, it will be easier to earn their trust, which translates to more sales. This should be the goal of every e-commerce enterprise.
