Good news for online shoppers. A new survey shows that nearly 70 percent of e-commerce merchants tightened their credit card security to better protect brand reputation and preserve customer loyalty. Only about 26 percent of respondents claimed to have increased security to avoid penalties related to Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) non-compliance.
Despite the payment industry’s attempts to secure and protect credit cardholder information, data breaches, cyber crime and identity theft continues to occur worldwide – just pick up the newspaper any given day to read another story about companies falling victim to hacking. So regardless of the motives, it’s encouraging to find that more merchants today are taking steps to curb potential fraud.
Conducted by Visa’s CyberSource unit and Trustwave, the survey generated some other interesting results including:
A majority of respondents said they felt the threat of payment data theft from employees equaled the threat from external hackers. Large merchants and organizations were more likely to cast a suspicious eye on their own staff, with 38 percent citing them as the likely source of a breach.
* Over the next two years, more merchants expect to move credit card data from their networks to third-party vendors to reduce security risks and data storage and compliance costs. * Merchants that outsource their credit card data processing and storage spend less on infrastructure. * Merchants that do not capture, transmit, or store data inside their own network tend to employ fewer personnel, validate PCI DSS compliance more quickly, and operate at a lower overall cost of payment security. * To avoid storing credit card information in-house, a growing number of merchants are embracing tokenization. Although survey results reveal that that most merchants are making strides in protecting sensitive cardholder data, there continue to be global challenges with PCI compliance and safety. SPVA remains dedicated to providing a unified voice in the world of secure payment solutions.
Interested in learning how SPVA can help you? Contact me at 404.803.0636, steven.hughes@spva.org or visit www.SPVA.org.