This attracts huge numbers of users, and in many countries banks and financial institutions are seriously considering the complete discontinuation of cash flow in favor of cash-free payments.
The dramatic growth in the number of users of all types of payment systems is attracting cybercriminals with ever-growing resources into fraud schemes with which they can gain access to users’ financial data.
To combat the possible financial data breaches, experts invented the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) which is the Payment Card Security Standard for secure handling of card holder’s data and reducing card fraud.
The standard places various tough controls corresponding to the storage, transmission and processing of cardholder data that businesses handle. Though built with the intent to protect sensitive cardholder’s data, even complaint organizations have been breached in the past, and may still stand at the risk of being breached.
PCI DSS is intended to protect sensitive cardholder data and has significant trust and popularity with time.
But some misconceptions about the standard are floating in the minds of stakeholders adopting the PCI DSS.
One of the biggest misconceptions about PCI DSS compliance is that PCI DSS-certified companies are secure, or precisely, hacker-proof!!!
In cases where, a PCI DSS complaint organization is hacked and the card holder’s data is breached, the stake holders often state that either the PCI DSS is ineffective to protect cardholder data. On the contrary, it’s the way organizations are approaching PCI DSS compliance, and that is flawed.
And the question that usually arises in such scenarios is, if PCI DSS does not guarantee security, what is the benefit of complying with it?
PCI DSS only reduces the probability of a security breach but does not necessarily eliminate this probability. There are multiple reasons why even the PCI DSS-certified organizations are being breached. This may include the organizations’ approach to PCI DSS compliance, the use of unqualified assessors or inefficient monitoring and investigation capabilities to handle security incidents. It’s not merely an annual assessment and obtaining a certification, rather adequate security awareness to all the organization’s stakeholders to ensure PCI DSS required security controls are understood and applied to all the system components in scope throughout the year.
Nice Article. Can you please elaborate the risks with PCI DSS