How to be PCI DSS compliant?

Your company has a great product or sought-after service? Your website is well designed and motivates customers to add items to their cart? You’ve also provided your customers with a huge number of payment methods, but you haven’t taken care of a high level of security? In this case, you can consider that you have nothing.
Do you know what is PCI DSS compliant? PCI DSS compliant allows a company to guarantee a high level of security to all its customers when using payment cards as payment.
In this article, we will talk about the importance of compatibility with this security standard and how to become PCI DSS compliant.

What will happen if i am not PCI DSS compliant?

As you know, PCI DSS level 1 compliant is mandatory for all companies that accept credit card payments. This set of rules is not some legal requirement, and it was created by the largest payment systems MasterCard and Visa, as well as other well-known companies Discover, American Express and JCB. It was these companies that developed the 12 most important security requirements, as well as about 200 additional requirements.
So what happens if you ignore these rules? Your business will definitely not benefit from it, because in this case your customers will be unprotected. If someone were able to hack into your site and gain access to customer data, not only would you suffer serious losses, but above all, your reputation would suffer, not to mention the liability you would incur.
Complying with this standard will allow your customers to have confidence in the security of their credit card payments. And any difficulties you may have on the road to compliance will be just a small price to pay for the privilege.

The path to PCI compliance

In reality, compliance with the security standard is not that difficult. You just need to follow 5 steps:

1. How compliant is your company now with PCI?

First of all, you need to answer this question and answer it honestly. There is no single security standard that is equally good for different types of businesses. So you need to assess how well you store customer information, how you handle transactions, which firms and financial institutions you work with, what your sales volume trends are. Then everything will depend on whether you accept Mastercard or Visa. MasterCard has four levels of compliance, and Visa has five. So you can figure out what level you are at.

2. Take the time to fill out a special self-assessment questionnaire

There are 9 types of questionnaires, and you need to fill out each one in detail. Don’t be alarmed, we’re just kidding. In fact, just the one that best fits your type of business. Each book has about 10 requirements and you’ll just have to answer yes or no. Through such simple actions, you will be able to really assess the important points about your company’s transaction security.

3. Fix what needs to be fixed

In very rare cases, the company’s operations meet all the security requirements, so you will probably also have aspects that need to be improved. Make the necessary changes and fill out the form again.

4. Choose a provider that provides data tokenization

With data tokenization, you don’t have to store information on a local server where it can be stolen. Instead, all credit card data will be stored on a special portal. This will ensure a high level of their protection.

5. Important formalities

You have completely upgraded the security by eliminating the weaknesses. Now the usual formalities remain, such as filling out a certificate of compliance (ACO). With this, you will officially declare that your business is fully compliant with PCI standards. This certificate will be reviewed by an experienced security evaluator who will report that your company is in full compliance.

These simple steps will allow your customers to be confident that your company guarantees them a high level of data security and transaction security, and therefore they will be more willing to become happy customers.