No matter how small your business is or how daunting this task is, it’s important to ensure that you’re doing all you can to protect your data.
Compliance can be just a checklist item, but it should be the first step in addressing the gaps in your business security and building a powerful data security solution—not only for your own business but also to protect your customers’ and employees’ information.
The three main points we will cover are:
Whenever we talk about PCI validation, the first thought that comes to mind is that it’s too hard and complicated. Before we address that, it’s important to understand how vital PCI compliance is.
There are a lot of inherent risks in our lives.
For example, driving a car. Cars are an absolute convenience. We can go from point A to point B very quickly. But there is an inherent risk when we are driving on the road, and there are certain things we do to make sure that the car is safe to drive. Things like making sure that you are legally able to operate the car, that all mechanical components are working properly, and that we are following traffic laws. Sometimes these laws can seem like a hindrance to being able to drive cars, but it’s really about addressing and mitigating that risk.
Credit cards are the same. They provide a lot of convenience in our lives, and, as a business owner, that’s what you want. You want your customers to be able to get the service or product as quickly and conveniently as possible.
But just like a car on the road, there is inherent risk in processing, transmitting, storing, and accepting credit card information. People want to steal and take advantage of a lot of data. It's your responsibility to ensure your business can handle this information safely, just like it's your responsibility to maintain and drive your car safely.
That’s where data security and compliance come in. Once we recognize the importance of compliance, it is no longer a hindrance but a necessity for businesses, especially if we consider the alternative.
If you do experience a data breach or if personal data is stolen, these situations can be a business-ending event.
Here are some tips and tricks for simplifying and reviewing the primary requirements and explaining why they are important and effective for data security and mitigating risk.
Why comply with PCI DSS requirements? It comes down to understanding why compliance is essential.
Once you start looking at PCI compliance through a security lens, meaning you understand what you’re doing and why, you’ll understand how it protects your business and customers’ information. A change in perception is one of the first steps to simplifying the PCI requirements and making it easier to meet them.
For example, a firewall doesn’t make too much sense if you're not technically minded. But once you understand the importance of controlling traffic in and out of your business network and how easy it is for sensitive data to leave, you’ll understand the importance of a firewall and other PCI compliance requirements.
Many merchants perceive that they are too small to be targeted or that they should just plug into a terminal and let it handle all their security. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Many small businesses are targeted and experience breaches every day. For many of them, the breaches are so severe that they need to close their businesses.
PCI compliance is about protecting your organization, not just checking a box
Once you’ve changed your perception about PCI compliance, becoming compliant won’t feel like a burden. Instead, you see PCI compliance as necessary for your business and something you want to achieve.
Compliance is just the first step toward data security. It would be nice just to be able to check a box, but it’s essential to do the work to protect the data that your business interacts with.
The other advantage is that it boosts customer confidence in your business. You can advertise that you are PCI compliant, which adds an extra layer of legitimacy to your business by protecting your clients and your business from experiencing a data breach.
Once we understand the importance of PCI compliance and meeting those requirements, how can we make this compliance as simple as possible?
Once you’ve learned about why it’s important to be PCI compliant, it’s time to see how to make compliance as simple as possible.
Simplicity boils down to two steps.
Start by identifying what is essential to protect our business and what is not; this process essentially identifies your scope.
My first tip to simplify PCI compliance is to write things down. Start documenting how credit cards are handled at your business, even if it’s as simple as a customer walking in and handing you their card, and you swipe it, and that’s it.
There are a lot of other things to consider:
Asking these questions and writing down the answers goes a long way in addressing the PCI validation and requirements. Many aspects of the PCI DSS are related to policies and procedures; having them written down is a massive step towards achieving PCI compliance. Writing things down is a simple exercise, but it makes a big difference.
It not only helps you understand your business but also addresses issues that you aren’t aware of. You may be shocked if you ask an employee how they are handling cards, and you might have the opportunity to address some risk there.
Once you've taken the time to document your business practices, you’ll better understand what's in scope. “In scope” means what is within your business that directly impacts or interacts with credit card information. The terminal out front is obviously in scope, but you may have a computer in the back that’s on a completely different network. And that might be out of scope because it doesn’t have any credit card information at all.
If you’re able to reduce your scope as much as possible, identify the pieces that deal with credit card information and eliminate the pieces that don’t touch information, this will reduce the cost of time and money when becoming PCI compliant. You won’t waste time ensuring all these other devices and items are compliant if they don’t need to be.
Speaking of removing things from your environment or scope, one way to greatly simplify your PCI requirements is to use network segmentation, which means dividing a business network into smaller pieces.
Say you have a computer and a payment terminal on one network, all sharing the same connection. That means all five computers are in the same environment, so they are all part of the PCI scope. They are all related to your credit card processing. To reduce your scope, you can segment those five computers and put them on a different network so they won’t be in your PCI scope. This is highly simplified, but hopefully it provides some understanding of what segmenting your network is and how it can help streamline your PCI validation.
Next, you need to train your staff on good security hygiene. You also want to ensure your policies are written down and disseminated to your employees. For example, if you have a policy that receipts should be shredded at the end of every day, you’ll want to make sure that’s written down as a policy and then train your employees so they are shredding the receipts.
That’s another example of how to reduce the risk of handling sensitive data and meet PCI requirements. It also shows a mindset of security rather than a checkbox approach. No matter how small the policy, it contributes to reducing risk.
By following these steps, you’ll be way ahead of the curve in meeting PCI requirements and becoming PCI compliant.
These steps will significantly simplify your validation, but having an expert in your corner never hurts as you are trying to meet the PCI standard. Use a security professional or a compliance professional to have resources, help, and guidance as you secure security gaps in your business.
PCI compliance is really just the first step to data security. While it's great to check that box, you should be looking forward to the future and asking, “What are my next steps in reducing risk and enhancing security for my business?”
If you've followed this blog, you’ve likely already got policies and procedures in place, PCI documentation, and trained employees, but there are other things you can do to stay secure.
No matter how small your business is or how daunting this task is, it’s important to ensure that you’re doing all you can to protect your data.
Reducing the risk of fines, fees, lawsuits, and other issues that come up when you’re not compliant can potentially save your business. Keeping these risks in mind can help you understand the importance of data security. A majority of breaches could have been prevented if businesses were PCI compliant. This would have prevented fees, lawsuits, and, in many cases, the end of the business.
We hope this information is helpful for you in building your data security plan and learning how to adopt a security mindset for your business.
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