Winning the PCI Compliance Battle

The Payment Card Industry Locks Down Customer Data

The last several years have seen an unprecedented assault on personal and
financial data that customers have knowingly or unwittingly entrusted to retailers,
banks, service providers and credit card companies. Bank of America, BJ’s
Wholesale Club, CardSystems Solutions, Choicepoint, Citigroup, DSW Show
Warehouse, Hotels.com, LexisNexis, Polo Ralph Lauren and Wachovia are just
a few of the names that have been boldly exposed in the media and pummeled
in the financial markets after major data security breaches were revealed.
Credit card data in particular has been compromised so frequently that calls for
government intervention and regulation became widespread.
Taking another approach, the payment card industry countered the
criminal onslaught with a homegrown security initiative that is at once broader
in scope and more granular in its requirements than any measures additional
government regulation might have imposed. The Payment Card Industry Data
Security Standard…