What Are The Pci Compliance Requirements?

By Author: Antonio Bristow
Total Articles: 45

PCI stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). It is a collection of necessary requirements so that all companies that are into (data) processing, storage and transmission of credit card information are bound by this to maintain a secure environment. Be it financial institutions or processors, its compliance mandates must be adhered to with all applicable standards by all such organizations. The merchants, for that matter any kind of vendor, who are under require to have an ID. It ensures that the PCI compliance requirements apply and are met with, however big or small the size or the number of transactions might be. One of the few things that has to be mentioned here is that it also minimizes the cost and resources that need to be allocated.

The level of compliance requirement is determined on the basis of the volume of Visa transaction which in turn is based on the aggregate number of transactions that take place over the period of one year. It applies to credit, debit and prepaid as well from a merchant DBA (Doing Business As). Visa acquirers will have to consider the average number of transactions stored, processed and transmitted by the entity to fix the level of validation in case a corporation has got multiple DBA. If the data is not done the aggregated way, the corporate figure cannot do anything on behalf of more than one DBA. In such a situation, to determine the validation level, acquirers will go on to consider individual transaction volume of DBA. And if any merchant corporation that has gone through the ordeal of its account being unfortunately hacked resulting in data compromise, it may then be escalated to a higher level of validation.

The PCI Data Security Standards requirement was designed and created to offer a comprehensive single framework to find a solution to data integrity, security and privacy problems and also to provide knowledge to sorely lacking sectors. It is not exactly a federal law at present but currently there are state laws (along with the backing of legislatures and industry trade associations) that are already effective to make sure its components are abided by.

Author's bio: Antonio Bristow has written many articles on security testing and its importance. In this article the author mentions about PCI compliance requirements. For more details, visit http://www.ivizsecurity.com/pci-compliance.html