Cardholder data is a huge concern for everyone in the payment industry — consumers, merchants, processors, and even financial institutions. Merchants and the financial institutions will suffer the most from unanticipated expenses resulting from a data breach or the event of fraud.
Consumers want to know that each time they offer their card, whether it is with a POS, eCommerce, over the phone or via email, they need to know their information is safe.
The PCI Security Standards Council has developed their set of industry standards in place to protect such data, they also require service providers to maintain that the high set standard for security. The end goal being software vendors develop secure payment applications that do not store prohibited data. Some of those safeguards are a full magnetic stripe, PIN data and payment applications that are in compliance with the PCI Data Security Standard.
STATS
Honeywell stated consumers are willing to change their shopping behavior to safeguard their data if they personally suffered from a data breach. Seventy-six percent of consumers surveyed would forego credit and debit transactions and 38 percent said they would entirely avoid a particular retailer if they personally suffered from a data breach.
According to SecurityScorecard, more than 90 percent of retailers are out of compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. Penalties for non-compliance are as high as $100,000 every month or $500,000 per security incident.
Merchant Maverick conducted a study and found Two-thirds of cyber breach victims are small to mid-sized businesses. 55% of smaller merchants reported a data breach for the year before. A significant cyber breach could cost a small business upwards of $80K or more. Due to bad press and cost, 60% of small businesses close shop permanently within six months of a cyber attack.
WHERE TO GO FROM HERE
Platinum Payments offers many different types of encryption and security options.
With Safe-T’s layered approach to security, small to medium-sized businesses and their customers can feel more confident that their payments are secure.
Safe-T Solo — Reimbursement up to a maximum of $50,000
Safe-T Silver — Reimbursement up to a maximum amount of $100,000
Safe-T Gold — Reimbursement of up to a maximum amount of $250,000
With each transaction the primary account numbers are encrypted; however, it is imperative that as a business owner you are making sure that your hardware is compatible with your software. For example, if you were trying to process a payment using a POS with Elavon approved software, the information would not go through if the POS failed to encrypt the Primary Account Numbers.
NOW WHAT
First off, there is no reason that anyone should be non-compliant. Think of it as an additional insurance plan for your business. Being compliant helps to defray card network fines, fees or assessments associated with breaches, in addition to your customers feeling safe and secure.
The information is there, the knowledge is there, the technology is there, awareness is increasing, now it is just a matter of what a responsible business owner will do with it. Remember, you are fine, until your not. So, why risk it? The help and resources are there, so use it.
** The SAFE-T for SMB Services only apply to card-present Transactions (the
processing environment where the Payment Device is physically presented to the Company
by the Cardholder as the form of payment at the time of Transaction) and mail
order/telephone order transactions, and do not apply for Electronic Commerce Transactions.
For mail-order/telephone order transactions, information must be hand-keyed into the POS
Device for SAFE-T For SMB Services to apply.