Electronic Cash News

Even though there are vast improvements in how merchants protect your credit card information, it is still disturbing that over 1/3 of our credit card transaction information is not protected by any reasonable financial standards. Visa just announced “… that 65 percent of the largest U.S. merchants (those processing six million or more Visa transactions annually) have now validated their compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), up from 36 percent in December 2006. Among medium-sized merchants (those processing one to six million Visa transactions annually), compliance grew from 15 percent in December 2006 to 43 percent as of September 30, 2007. The merchants that comprise these two categories account for approximately two-thirds of Visa’s U.S. transaction volume.” As reported by Payment News.

The PCI DSS is the payment industry’s standards body for setting security standards for organizations that handle credit card information. Merchants and financial institutions are spending millions to get compliant with these standards. No company desires to be in the news being identified as loosing their customer’s credit card information to a hacker or laptop thief.

As it should be, identify theft and safe guarding personal information is becoming more and more a risk management issue for companies. The challenge is to not be complacent with just meeting a ID theft standard such as PCI and then not worry about the issue any more. Safeguarding personal information is an on-going program for both individuals and companies. The on-going challenge for all of us is that the hacker or thief will find a new way to breach security and get our personal information.