PCI Compliance Made Easy!
3 Simple Steps to be PCI Compliant

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PCI compliance can be overwhelming to the average business owner who discovers that they’re required by their bank or merchant provider to become PCI compliant in order to collect and process credit cards online.

The reality is that to achieve PCI compliance, you have to educate yourself on a variety of security protocols and processes, along with various terminology and acronyms used by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC).

Fortunately, with a little help, you can successfully navigate these waters, achieve compliance, and get back to business. The first thing you need to do is to understand why it’s important and what’s involved; then, all it really takes is 3 simple steps actually become PCI Compliant.

Why is PCI Compliance Important?

PCI Compliance - also known as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard Compliance, was created by the 5 major credit card companies in order to establish a minimum level of data security for businesses that collect customer information.

This standard was put in place to help protect your business, your customer’s information, and the credit card companies from things like hackers, data theft, data loss, privacy issues, etc., because in today’s world, information is currency, and hackers and thieves will do almost anything to get access to your customer’s data - especially credit card information.

By implementing this Data Security Standard, you are putting proven processes and systems in place to help protect you and your customers from data loss or breaches that can happen to honest businesses, due to a variety of unfortunate situations that most people never even consider until it’s too late.

What happens if I ever get breached?

If you collect, transmit, process or store any credit card transactions - in other words, if you have pretty much anything whatsoever to do with credit cards, whether you’re a local business or an online merchant, you are ultimately liable for any information you collect, and as such are open to a variety of consequences should that information ever be compromised, including:

Legal fees.

Not only do you open your business up to lawsuits, but breach lawyers are very expensive, and the fees can rack up quickly into the 10’s of thousands of dollars.

Bank fines.

If you’re not PCI Compliant and you suffer a security breach your merchant bank is going to come down on you for every customer who they had to reimburse after the theft or fraud.

Forensic fees.

Before you can continue processing credit cards, your entire system has to be investigated by a forensics team to determine how the information was stolen, and then the breach has to be fixed and tested.

Remediation.

In addition to bank fines, you may be required to provide credit monitoring to your customers for a certain period of time. This can cost upwards of $20-$30 per customer.

Federal audits and fines.

The FTC might get involved if your company was negligent. This could mean investigations into your business and processes, along with fines and regulations that can cripple your business moving forward.

Loss of revenue.

Not only will you be unable to temporarily conduct business after your breach, but the after-effects can cause your revenue to drop. For example, when Target was breached, their profits fell $440 million the following fiscal quarter.

Difficulty processing cards.

Once you’re breached, merchant banks are much more hesitant to process transactions on your behalf, and may deny you or charge much higher fees.

Damage to your reputation.

Even if you get through all of the issues above, you still have to deal with the long-term effects that a breach has on your company’s reputation. There are often news articles and social media posts that linger for months or even years following a breach.

With all of these issues to deal with, it’s no wonder that 60% of
businesses that get breached go out of business within 6 months!

What can PCI Compliance do to protect
my business from getting hacked?

PCI Compliance doesn't necessarily guarantee that you will never be breached, but what it
does is help you to put safety procedures in place that significantly reduce the risk of a breach.
This is accomplished in two parts; PCI Scanning and a Self-Assessment Questionnaire.

PCI SCANNING

The PCI Scan is a special external scan approved by the PCI Security Standards Council that utilizes known vulnerabilities and ethically tries to gain access to your site. A report is then generated that shows you where the vulnerabilities are and how to fix them.

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SELF ASSESSMENT QUESTIONNAIRE

The Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) is a series of questions that discuss security policies and procedures that you need to have in place in order to protect your business from the main types of threats that can impact your business.

In simplified terms, the 12 PCI Compliance
Requirements
in the SAQ are:

Install and maintain a firewall to protect your network.

Change any default passwords on any computers or software.

Protect any cardholder data that your store on your servers.

Securely encrypt the transmission of cardholder data and sensitive information (SSL).

Develop and maintain secure systems and applications.

Restrict customer data only to people that need access.

Assign a unique username and password to each person with computer access.

Restrict physical access to your servers only to people that need access.

Track and monitor the people that have access to your servers and network.

Regularly test security in your systems and processes.

Maintain a security policy for your business.

Use and regularly update anti-virus software

Depending on what type of business you operate, the number of questions
within each of these 12 sections of the SAQ can vary.

Achieve PCI Compliance
with Trust Guard

While PCI Compliance is very important for every business that accepts credit cards, in order to be
fully protected, you need Trust Guard Total Website Protection.

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Protection #1: PCI Compliance Scans
We scan for over 75,613 known vulnerabilities, and provide you with a detailed PCI report, along with helpful instructions to resolve any potential threats

Protection #2: Heuristic Malware Scans
We utilize Artificial Intelligence that scans millions of datapoints from other sites online, and then looks for suspicious and hidden code in your files that shouldn't be there.

Protection #3: SSL Validation Scans
We scan your current SSL to make sure it is always active. Once your current SSL is close to expiring, based on your plan we will install the latest Auto-Renewing SSL for you.

What are the 3 Steps I need to take
to become PCI Compliant?

PCI Compliance doesn’t have to be difficult once you know the steps and
have access to the right tools! All it takes is the following 3 steps:

Trust Guard scans your website
for over 75,000 known
vulnerabilities. Once you pass
your scan you’ll receive
a PCI Scan Report

Fill out a Self-Assessment
Questionnaire (SAQ) in
your Trust Guard Control
Panel using our online wizard.

Simply forward your PCI
Scan Report and your SAQ
form to your merchant bank,
and your site is PCI Compliant!

Become PCI Compliant with Trust Guard

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© 2006-2021 Trust Guard, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Trust Guard is a Registered Trademark. Any reproduction, distribution, display, or transmission of any content or images is strictly prohibited, unless authorized by Trust Guard.

Trust Guard works directly with a team of Insurance providers, including Coalition, RPS and Buckner to provide their clients with affordable Cyber Insurance solutions; however, Trust Guard is not a commercial insurance carrier or an insurance agency, and does not issue any policies directly. Any Trust Guard clients who want insurance will be required to fill out an application and sign a Cyber Insurance policy issued directly from the Insurance carrier.
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