Credit cards are widespread and their use for online payments is increasing dramatically. However this increase has also brought about a growth in credit card fraud. In March 2007, TJX Companies Inc. disclosed that at least 45.6 million credit and debit card numbers were stolen by hackers who broke into its network. In a bid to tighten up security and prevent similar breaches to that experienced by TJX, all businesses handling credit/debit card data now need to comply with strict security standards drawn up by the world’s major credit card companies including VISA and MasterCard. These requirements are known as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and to date these govern all the payment channels including retail, mail orders, telephone orders and e-commerce.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and GFI Software
Since companies are constantly at risk of losing sensitive cardholder data, which could result in fines, legal action and bad publicity, achieving compliance with the PCI DSS should be high on the agenda of companies who store, transmit or process credit card data. Organizations that fail to comply face fines of up to $500,000 if the data is lost or stolen and risk not being allowed to handle cardholder data.

GFI Suite
GFI Software offers organizations who need to become PCI DSS compliant one holistic solution – the GFI PCI Suite. The GFI PCI Suite combines two award-winning solutions:

• GFI EventsManager, a complete event log management solution and
• GFI LANguard Network Security Scanner (N.S.S.), a complete network vulnerability management solution that includes vulnerability scanning, patch management and network auditing.

What is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)?

Read more about PCI compliance