With more and more people wanting to work in the cybersecurity industry, there are a lot of lucrative jobs available for professionals. This article will englighten you on cyber security professional salary, does cyber security pay well, how much do cyber security make, it security salary, it cyber security salary, entry level cyber security salary and cyber salary in totality.

Cyber security is a big business, and the field has been growing massively in recent years. In 2015 Burning Glass Technologies found that cyber security professionals make about 9% more than other IT workers.

The shortage of qualified cyber security professionals is a major problem that has been hindering companies from effectively combating current industry threats. As David Shearer, CEO of ISC² notes in the press release on GISWS findings, 66% percent of workers surveyed say they have too few qualified staff to combat these challenges.

In 2017, there are about 780,000  cybersecurity professionals in the U.S., with 350,000 current openings and a zero percent unemployment rate.

The cyber security field has been experiencing major growth in the last few years and is projected to grow even more.

Most cyber security roles today are focused on protecting networks and data.

There are many different types of cyber security jobs, and all require strong communication skills and deep knowledge in the field.

Cyber security professionals risk becoming obsolete in a few short years because of their lack of current, advanced expertise. The threat landscape will continue to evolve even more so than it does now. As the future progresses, there are both traditional and newer roles that cyber security experts can take on such as being incident response specialists or malware analysts.

Here are a few of the skills needed for some popular jobs right now.

Security architects are responsible for preventing future attacks. They also must stay up to date on the latest threats and security tools.

There is a high demand for malware analysts because of the rise in ransomware attacks, like WannaCry which caused $4 billion worth of damages. So many companies are hiring them that there’s not enough talent to go around.

IT Security Engineers are in charge of quality control within IT environments, which helps to ensure that security measures are in place for new threats.

The demand for cyber security experts is high, so many companies are turning to outside consultants.

So, you’re probably asking, “How much do cyber security professionals make??” 

Here’s a breakdown from LinkedIn:

LinkedIn%20Cyber%20Security%20Consultant min

Security is a growing need in the job market, and more companies are turning to cloud storage for their mission-critical applications.

In order to be a good security incident responder, you need to have curiosity about the motive behind an attack so that you can create efficient responses. With all of these cybercrimes going on, there is more demand for people who are capable in this field.

A security systems administrator’s responsibility is to defend against unauthorized access and establish company-wide security requirements.

As more companies strive towards AI and IoT, the demand for data security strategists will rise. They help to create policies that protect stored data.

The CISO needs to be a champion for security projects, heshe also is in charge of making smarter decisions with regards to cyber-security. The CISO has the responsibility of providing funding and awareness while managing employees who are working on these projects.

The cyber security specialist is the one who updates and protects a computer network.

There are many skills and characteristics that people in the cyber security industry should possess.

Cyber security specialists may have first started out as ethical hackers, or they might have had some military background with a focus on communications and cyber-security.

Too often when people think of cyber security, they only see the negative aspect. When systems are breached or attacks happen on a large scale, that’s when people notice.

In the cyber security field, other skills and practices can help professionals advance in their careers.

  • Ask questions. Nobody is all-knowing, especially when it comes to cyber security threats.
  • If you’re in IT and know your stuff, people outside of the department may not understand how important it is to keep security a priority. Make sure they do by taking advantage of any opportunities that come up.
  • Communicate effectively. Cyber security is a highly technical field, but you can’t speak in jargon when communicating to others about threats and the need for better security.
  • For many security professionals, the fun part of their job is testing and breaking new things. Hackers are always looking for ways to access valuable data. This means putting your company’s systems and applications through a series of tests in order to identify their breaking points.
  • To stay relevant in the cybersecurity industry, it’s important to always be learning and evolving with new threats.

What is the educational and work history requirement for this job?

  • There are a lot of different degree programs for cyber security. You can study from certificate to doctoral level, and there’s plenty of variety in topics as well.
  • Computer forensics
  • Internet security
  • Cryptography
  • Cyber security fundamentals
  • Data recovery
  • Information systems privacy
  • Internet security

Cyber security technicians often only need a certificate or associates degree, but cyber security engineers must have at least a Bachelor’s degree.

Certifications can include:

  • CREA is an organization that certifies individuals in reverse engineering.
  • It is a certification that proves you have the skills to be considered for this job.
  • Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
  • The CCFE certification is a well-recognized qualification.
  • CISSP
  • CISA
  • CISM

There are a lot of opportunities for entry-level positions in cybersecurity, and with several years on the job you can work your way up to more senior roles.

If you’re an IT professional and want to do cyber security, there are courses online that can teach you. For instance: Coursera has a Cybersecurity Fundamentals specialization where they’ll give lessons on things like:

  • Usable security
  • Cryptography
  • Hardware security
  • Software security

Those who take the course and pay 49 dollars, get a certificate.

Udemy is another online course platform, with courses on cyber security such as:

  • Introduction to Cyber Security
  • This video boot camp from Cisco is a great way to get started with the CCNA Security certification.
  • One way to build a more secure company is by investing in cyber security. This includes making sure that the network has multiple firewalls and other protections, as well as educating all employees about what they need to do if there’s an attack.

For those who want to learn more about cybersecurity, the SANS Institute or Carnegie Mellon University are good options.

Cyber security is a booming industry right now, and salaries for top positions are on the rise.

Cyber security careers can be lucrative. According to one survey, the average cyber security professional earns $116,000 per year while PayScale estimates that computer-security specialists earn an average of 74K a year with location being a major factor in pay structure.

According to Glassdoor.com, cyber security engineers make an average of $85k annually – but salaries vary by location and company size.

According to a report from TechRepublic, the top three cities in which cyber security professionals can make the most money include (salary data adjusted for cost of living):

  1. Minneapolis, MN: $127,752
  2. Seattle, WA: $119,348
  3. San Francisco (San Jose), CA: $99K base with a higher commission structure and bonuses for performance

Cyber Security Jobs Salary

DICE IT, a job board for the tech industry, published data on five of the most in-demand security jobs.

The lead software security engineer makes $233,332. The chief security officer is paid at $225,000; the global information security director earns about $200,000; and the chief information security officer gets paid around $192,500.

There are many factors that affect salary, such as education and experience. Larger companies tend to pay more in order to attract top-tier talent. Here is a sampling of data from Glassdoor reflecting salaries at various companies; this data was collected based on self reports by employees, so it’s not always accurate:

  • The U.S Air Force offers a salary of $57,000 per year.
  • U.S. Navy: $115,000 annually
  • PwC offers an annual salary of up to $73,000.
  • The Northrop Grumman is a military company that pays $131,000 to $143,000 annually for new employees.
  • The average annual salary for this position is between $86,000 and $93,000.

According to the data from Indeed (at this time), cyber security careers vary in salaries. Security Officers make $11.46 an hour, while a Consultant makes about $59 per hour.

  • IT Security Specialists earn an average of $52.54 per hour.
  • The average hourly wage for an information security analyst is $40.79 based on 2,422 salary reports.
  • The average security engineer salary is $38.93 per hour, based on 4,655 reports.
  • A security analyst makes about $41 per hour.
  • The average hourly rate for an intelligence analyst is $24.54, according to 306 salary reports.
  • The average hourly wage for a security specialist is $14.83 per hour, based on 6,979 reported salaries.
  • The average salary for a Network Security Engineer is $51.80 per hour, according to 2,587 reports.
  • Information Technology Specialists make about $20.87 per hour on average.
  • A security consultant earns an average of $59.42 per hour, according to 1,061 salary reports.
Indeed%20Salaries min

LinkedIn also provides a wide range of job opportunities, and their data is on what professionals in cyber security earn. The median salary for these positions ranges from $65,000 to $130,000 per year.

  • IT Security Specialists generally make between $49,100 and $141,000 depending on experience. The median pay is around $97,000.
  • The average salary for an information security analyst is $76,000. The range in pay can be from $51,000 to over 110K.
  • Security engineers make anywhere from $65,000 to $154,000. The median is around $102,000.
  • A security analyst’s salary ranges from $51,000 to $110,000. The median is around 76k.
  • The average intelligence analyst salary is $65,000.
  • The security specialist job can pay from $49,100 to $141,000. The median salary is around 97k.
  • The range for a network security engineer is $65,300 to $133,000 and the median amount of money they make is $95,500.
  • IT specialist salaries range from $35,000 to over $100,000. The median salary is around $58,000.
  • A security consultant can make anywhere from $50,000 to over $100,000. The median is about 87 thousand dollars.

The InformationWeek article says that starting pay is also on the rise, increasing 3.8% in 2017 over 2016.

Indeed also has information on salaries for popular entry-level jobs in the cyber security field, including:

  • IT Security Specialists make an average of 113,990 per year.
  • A security analyst can make, on average, $88k per year.
  • Entry Level Analysts make a median salary of $54,045 per year based on 1,998 reports.
  • Network analysts earn an average of $68,484 per year.
  • The average salary for an information security analyst is $84,269 a year.
Indeed%20Entry%20Level%20Salaries min

Cyber security professionals make a good living. Not only are they well-paid, but because of the high demand and complexity involved in their work it’s unlikely that there will be any change to this for some time.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


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What is SOC?

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Before we get into the nitty gritty details, let’s define SOC. It’s a security operations center is an industry standard for detecting and responding to cyberattacks. The SOCs are a valuable resource because they can detect incidents quickly.

What is security operations center? 

Security operations centers are facilities that house an information security team responsible for monitoring and analyzing the organization’s security posture on a continuous basis. Security analysts work closely with organizational incident response teams to ensure any detected incidents get addressed quickly.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


SOC objectives 

Security operations centers monitor and analyze activity on networks, servers, endpoint computers, databases. If there is any sort of anomaly or suspicious behavior in the network security breaches are investigated.

SOC security operation center 

Digital Security operations center is responsible for the ongoing, operational component of security. This includes analyzing and preventing cybersecurity incidents.

Digital Security operations center is important because it allows companies to keep track of what is happening in their networks.

What Does SOC Stand For In Security

A Security Operation Center (SOC) is a centralized function inside an organization that uses people, procedures, and technology to continually monitor and enhance the security posture of the business while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity events.

A SOC functions as a hub or central command post, collecting telemetry from throughout an organization’s IT infrastructure, including networks, devices, appliances, and data storage, regardless of where such assets are located. The development of advanced threats necessitates gathering context from a variety of sources. Essentially, the SOC serves as a point of contact for any events documented inside the organization that are being monitored. The SOC must decide how each of these incidents will be controlled and dealt with.

Benefits of Having a SOC

Security operations centers are a critical part of any security strategy. They provide 247 monitoring and analysis, which is key to detecting incidents quickly.

Roles Within a SOC

When it comes to security, the framework of your operations is made up of two things: software and employees.

Members of a SOC team include:

  • The leader of the group can step into any role, including overseeing security systems and procedures.
  • Data analysts are responsible for analyzing data, whether it is from a specific time period or after the occurrence of an event.
  • The investigator finds out what happened and why a breach occurred, usually working closely with the responder.
  • A person who is familiar with the requirements of responding to a security breach would be invaluable during one.
  • Auditors make sure that organizations are complying with current and future legislation. They ensure the compliance is met.

It’s important to note that in some organizations, one person performs multiple roles. It might depend on the size of an organization and how many people are needed for success.

Best Practices for Running a SOC

Security leaders are shifting focus from technology to the human element. SOC operatives manage known and existing threats while working on identifying emerging risks. They work with company needs, risk tolerance levels, and help put major incidents to rest.

The SOC needs to consume data from within the organization and correlate it with external information that provides insight into threats and vulnerabilities. This external cyber intelligence includes news feeds, signature updates, incident reports, threat briefs, and vulnerability alerts. The SOC staff must constantly feed this information into monitoring tools in order to keep up-to-date on current threats.

To be truly successful, SOCs need to use security automation. When they combine highly skilled analysts with this technology and skillsets, it allows them to increase their analytics power in order to better defend against data breaches and cyber-attacks.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.

What is SOC?

SOC – one way to make sure you hire the best people is by considering a candidate’s past experience.

Define SOC; A security operations center is an industry standard for detecting and responding to cyberattacks. The SOCs are a valuable resource because they can detect incidents quickly.

What is security operations center? 

Security operations centers are facilities that house an information security team responsible for monitoring and analyzing the organization’s security posture on a continuous basis. Security analysts work closely with organizational incident response teams to ensure any detected incidents get addressed quickly.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


SOC objectives 

Security operations centers monitor and analyze activity on networks, servers, endpoint computers, databases. If there is any sort of anomaly or suspicious behavior in the network security breaches are investigated.

SOC security operation center 

Digital Security operations center is responsible for the ongoing, operational component of security. This includes analyzing and preventing cybersecurity incidents.

Digital Security operations center is important because it allows companies to keep track of what is happening in their networks.

What Does SOC Stand For In Security

A Security Operation Center (SOC) is a centralized function inside an organization that uses people, procedures, and technology to continually monitor and enhance the security posture of the business while preventing, detecting, analyzing, and responding to cybersecurity events.

A SOC functions as a hub or central command post, collecting telemetry from throughout an organization’s IT infrastructure, including networks, devices, appliances, and data storage, regardless of where such assets are located. The development of advanced threats necessitates gathering context from a variety of sources. Essentially, the SOC serves as a point of contact for any events documented inside the organization that are being monitored. The SOC must decide how each of these incidents will be controlled and dealt with.

Benefits of Having a SOC

Security operations centers are a critical part of any security strategy. They provide 247 monitoring and analysis, which is key to detecting incidents quickly.

Roles Within a SOC

When it comes to security, the framework of your operations is made up of two things: software and employees.

Members of a SOC team include:

  • The leader of the group can step into any role, including overseeing security systems and procedures.
  • Data analysts are responsible for analyzing data, whether it is from a specific time period or after the occurrence of an event.
  • The investigator finds out what happened and why a breach occurred, usually working closely with the responder.
  • A person who is familiar with the requirements of responding to a security breach would be invaluable during one.
  • Auditors make sure that organizations are complying with current and future legislation. They ensure the compliance is met.

It’s important to note that in some organizations, one person performs multiple roles. It might depend on the size of an organization and how many people are needed for success.

Best Practices for Running a SOC

Security leaders are shifting focus from technology to the human element. SOC operatives manage known and existing threats while working on identifying emerging risks. They work with company needs, risk tolerance levels, and help put major incidents to rest.

The SOC needs to consume data from within the organization and correlate it with external information that provides insight into threats and vulnerabilities. This external cyber intelligence includes news feeds, signature updates, incident reports, threat briefs, and vulnerability alerts. The SOC staff must constantly feed this information into monitoring tools in order to keep up-to-date on current threats.

To be truly successful, SOCs need to use security automation. When they combine highly skilled analysts with this technology and skillsets, it allows them to increase their analytics power in order to better defend against data breaches and cyber-attacks.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


What is Data Loss Prevention?

What is DLP? Data loss prevention software is used to keep sensitive data safe by monitoring and controlling endpoint activities, filtering data streams on corporate networks, and monitoring data in the cloud.

Data Leak Prevention Technology

DLP Data loss prevention is a strategy that helps organizations protect personal information, IP, and visibility of data.

  • If you collect and store customer data, such as personal information or payment card info, then your company is likely subject to compliance regulations like HIPAA for PHI or GDPR for EU residents. You can use DLP to identify sensitive data and monitor activities surrounding it.
  • Your organization is trying to get a better understanding of where data goes and how it’s used. A comprehensive enterprise DLP solution can provide visibility into your network, endpoints, cloud storage drives.

There are many different ways DLP can help organizations. One is with insider threats, another is Office 365 data security, and the third type of use case would be user behavior analysis.


Protect Your Organization with Data Leak Prevention Technology 

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


Why DLP Data Loss Prevention?

7 Trends Driving data loss protection

The DLP market has been growing rapidly for years. It includes everything from managed services to cloud functionality, and it’s seen an uptick in adoption because of the number of data breaches that have happened recently.

  1. More CEOs are hiring CISOs to protect their company’s data. These individuals typically report directly to the CEO, and they work with DLP software for regular reporting.
  2. New data protection regulations are being passed around the world, and you need to be prepared for them. You can use DLP solutions to help evolve with these changes.
  3. Increased use of the cloud, complicated supply chain networks, and other services you no longer have full control over has made protecting your data more complex. It’s important to know who is accessing your sensitive information before it leaves your company.
  4. Data breaches are frequent and large. Adversaries from nation states, cyber criminals, or malicious insiders will target your data for various motives such as corporate espionage or personal financial gain. Data Loss Prevention can protect against all of these adversaries, whether they’re intentional or not.
  5. Stolen data is often sold on the Dark Web for a few thousand dollars. There’s no question that this provides motivation to steal information.
  6. Intangible assets, such as pricing models and business methodologies, are now considered sensitive data. This means there is a lot more to protect during the hiring process.
  7. There is a shortfall of security professionals. There are 3.5 million unfilled positions projected by 2021, and 43% of companies have felt the impact to their own organization.

DLP information security; DLP solutions 

  • With a main objective in place, it’s easier to know which type of DLP deployment architecture is the most appropriate. The four types are Endpoint DLP, Network DLPS Discovery and Cloud.
  • It is not only the IT security team’s responsibility to make DLP decisions. It should be a company-wide decision, which includes input from top executives like the CFO and CEO.
  • Before I was able to get started with DLP vendors, I had a lot of questions. What types of deployment architectures are offered? Do they support Windows, Linux and OS X with feature parity? What deployment options do they offer? Do they provide managed services or not needed at all for my business needs? With this in mind, what kind of threats should be considered: internal or external ones only; both inside and outside the organization’s walls; data protection from structured files as well as unstructured documents such as PDFs and spreadsheets.; self-classification by users rather than classification performed by an administrator.?
  • What options do I have when it comes to my deployment?
  • Do they have the same features for Windows, Linux, and OS X?
  • What are the company’s deployment options? Do they provide managed services?
  • What is your threat profile? Are you focused on defending against external or internal threats, or both?
  • Which inspection and classification system do you want? Do your users need to be able to classify documents on their own, or is it a mix of different methods?
  • Do you prefer to protect structured or unstructured data?
  • Will you be able to monitor and control data movement based on policies or events? Will this system provide the ability for user-based monitoring of data movements
  • What compliance regulations are you obligated to follow? What new ones do you expect coming up in the future?”
  • Who are the technological partners of your organization, and what would you like to integrate with DLP?
  • When do you want to start implementing your DLP program?
  • Are you going to need more people on your team in order to manage this DLP program?
  • Create clearly defined roles and responsibilities for the individuals in your DLP program. This will help provide checks and balances.
  • It’s important to start with a clear plan before you begin. It can be helpful to take the project approach, where your goal is focused on solving one problem at a time or it can help if you use the data visibility approach and focus on discovery of any sensitive data in order to control egress.
  • Meet with the heads of your company to discuss data protection policies. This will help ensure that different business units are aware of how they might be impacted by these policies and what is expected in them.
  • It’s important to document your processes so you can be consistent with how policies are applied, keep records of reviews and provide useful information when hiring new people.
  • Determine what metrics you want to monitor and share with your business leaders. Determine how successful your DLP program is, then try to improve it by focusing on the right KPIs.
  • DLP is not a product, it’s an ongoing process. You can get quick wins with installing the tool, but understanding that DLP is about constantly monitoring data will help you have lasting success.

Data leakage prevention; Experts Weigh in on Data Loss Prevention

Here are the basics of data leakage prevention.

DLP information security: The IT department has a lot of power over data protection, but everyone in the company influences it as well.

When building a case for data loss prevention, you must involve the leaders within your company who are stakeholders. They will be able to provide input on what needs to be done in order to protect their information.

When you’re looking to build a case for implementing an anti-fraud solution, it’s important to involve the leaders within your company who will be affected by and have input in this decision. Bring these people with different backgrounds and areas of expertise into discussions during the discovery process so they can ask questions about what is being proposed.

Encryption is important because it’s the first line of defense against cyber attacks. It protects everything from credit cards to passwords, and there would be a lot more risk if we didn’t have encryption.

Encryption is a necessary tool for protecting your data from hackers, criminals, and foreign governments. The value of encryption cannot be overstated because it protects sensitive information that would otherwise not be safe.

One of the biggest threats to a company is if someone who works there decides to do something illegal. The best way for companies to prevent this from happening is by being proactive and training employees on what they can and cannot legally do as part of their work.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.

What is Data Loss Prevention?

What is DLP? Data loss prevention software is used to keep sensitive data safe by monitoring and controlling endpoint activities, filtering data streams on corporate networks, and monitoring data in the cloud.

Data Leak Prevention Technology

DLP Data loss prevention is a strategy that helps organizations protect personal information, IP, and visibility of data.

  • If you collect and store customer data, such as personal information or payment card info, then your company is likely subject to compliance regulations like HIPAA for PHI or GDPR for EU residents. You can use DLP to identify sensitive data and monitor activities surrounding it.
  • Your organization is trying to get a better understanding of where data goes and how it’s used. A comprehensive enterprise DLP solution can provide visibility into your network, endpoints, cloud storage drives.

There are many different ways DLP can help organizations. One is with insider threats, another is Office 365 data security, and the third type of use case would be user behavior analysis.


Protect Your Organization with Data Leak Prevention Technology 

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


Why DLP Data Loss Prevention?

7 Trends Driving data loss protection

The DLP market has been growing rapidly for years. It includes everything from managed services to cloud functionality, and it’s seen an uptick in adoption because of the number of data breaches that have happened recently.

  1. More CEOs are hiring CISOs to protect their company’s data. These individuals typically report directly to the CEO, and they work with DLP software for regular reporting.
  2. New data protection regulations are being passed around the world, and you need to be prepared for them. You can use DLP solutions to help evolve with these changes.
  3. Increased use of the cloud, complicated supply chain networks, and other services you no longer have full control over has made protecting your data more complex. It’s important to know who is accessing your sensitive information before it leaves your company.
  4. Data breaches are frequent and large. Adversaries from nation states, cyber criminals, or malicious insiders will target your data for various motives such as corporate espionage or personal financial gain. Data Loss Prevention can protect against all of these adversaries, whether they’re intentional or not.
  5. Stolen data is often sold on the Dark Web for a few thousand dollars. There’s no question that this provides motivation to steal information.
  6. Intangible assets, such as pricing models and business methodologies, are now considered sensitive data. This means there is a lot more to protect during the hiring process.
  7. There is a shortfall of security professionals. There are 3.5 million unfilled positions projected by 2021, and 43% of companies have felt the impact to their own organization.

DLP information security; DLP solutions 

  • With a main objective in place, it’s easier to know which type of DLP deployment architecture is the most appropriate. The four types are Endpoint DLP, Network DLPS Discovery and Cloud.
  • It is not only the IT security team’s responsibility to make DLP decisions. It should be a company-wide decision, which includes input from top executives like the CFO and CEO.
  • Before I was able to get started with DLP vendors, I had a lot of questions. What types of deployment architectures are offered? Do they support Windows, Linux and OS X with feature parity? What deployment options do they offer? Do they provide managed services or not needed at all for my business needs? With this in mind, what kind of threats should be considered: internal or external ones only; both inside and outside the organization’s walls; data protection from structured files as well as unstructured documents such as PDFs and spreadsheets.; self-classification by users rather than classification performed by an administrator.?
  • What options do I have when it comes to my deployment?
  • Do they have the same features for Windows, Linux, and OS X?
  • What are the company’s deployment options? Do they provide managed services?
  • What is your threat profile? Are you focused on defending against external or internal threats, or both?
  • Which inspection and classification system do you want? Do your users need to be able to classify documents on their own, or is it a mix of different methods?
  • Do you prefer to protect structured or unstructured data?
  • Will you be able to monitor and control data movement based on policies or events? Will this system provide the ability for user-based monitoring of data movements
  • What compliance regulations are you obligated to follow? What new ones do you expect coming up in the future?”
  • Who are the technological partners of your organization, and what would you like to integrate with DLP?
  • When do you want to start implementing your DLP program?
  • Are you going to need more people on your team in order to manage this DLP program?
  • Create clearly defined roles and responsibilities for the individuals in your DLP program. This will help provide checks and balances.
  • It’s important to start with a clear plan before you begin. It can be helpful to take the project approach, where your goal is focused on solving one problem at a time or it can help if you use the data visibility approach and focus on discovery of any sensitive data in order to control egress.
  • Meet with the heads of your company to discuss data protection policies. This will help ensure that different business units are aware of how they might be impacted by these policies and what is expected in them.
  • It’s important to document your processes so you can be consistent with how policies are applied, keep records of reviews and provide useful information when hiring new people.
  • Determine what metrics you want to monitor and share with your business leaders. Determine how successful your DLP program is, then try to improve it by focusing on the right KPIs.
  • DLP is not a product, it’s an ongoing process. You can get quick wins with installing the tool, but understanding that DLP is about constantly monitoring data will help you have lasting success.

Data leakage prevention; Experts Weigh in on Data Loss Prevention

Here are the basics of data leakage prevention.

DLP information security: The IT department has a lot of power over data protection, but everyone in the company influences it as well.

When building a case for data loss prevention, you must involve the leaders within your company who are stakeholders. They will be able to provide input on what needs to be done in order to protect their information.

When you’re looking to build a case for implementing an anti-fraud solution, it’s important to involve the leaders within your company who will be affected by and have input in this decision. Bring these people with different backgrounds and areas of expertise into discussions during the discovery process so they can ask questions about what is being proposed.

Encryption is important because it’s the first line of defense against cyber attacks. It protects everything from credit cards to passwords, and there would be a lot more risk if we didn’t have encryption.

Encryption is a necessary tool for protecting your data from hackers, criminals, and foreign governments. The value of encryption cannot be overstated because it protects sensitive information that would otherwise not be safe.

One of the biggest threats to a company is if someone who works there decides to do something illegal. The best way for companies to prevent this from happening is by being proactive and training employees on what they can and cannot legally do as part of their work.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.



What is data encryption? 

Encryption definition: Data encryption translates data into another form or encryption code. It is commonly referred to as ciphertext and unencrypted (or plain) text.

What does encryption do?

What does encrypted mean? Data encryption is a way to protect digital data from being stolen or destroyed when it’s on computer systems and in transmissions. The old standard (DES) has been replaced by newer, more secure algorithms.

These algorithms protect the integrity of a message, and they also make sure it is coming from where you think it’s coming from. They provide confidentiality by preventing an unauthorized user to read or modify information in transit.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


How does encryption work?

Data encryption is a process that encodes data with an algorithm and a key. After it’s encrypted, the only way to view its original form again is by decrypting it with the correct key.

Symmetric-key ciphers use the same key to encrypt and decrypt a message or file. The sender needs to exchange keys with the recipient before he can read it, which is why most data encryption services have adapted and now use an asymmetric algorithm for exchanging secret keys.

The Rivest-Sharmir-Adleman algorithm is a public key encryption meaning system that uses two different keys. One, the private key, should be kept secret and never shared with anyone else. The other one can be given to everyone because it doesn’t need protection.

Types of Encryption

Encryption is frequently used in one of two ways: with a symmetric key, or with an asymmetric key. An asymmetric key, often known as a secret key, employs a single key to encode and decode information. This is appropriate for one-on-one sharing and modest data collections. Asymmetric cryptography, often known as public-key cryptography, employs two connected keys — one private and one public. The encryption key is public and may be used to encrypt by anybody. The opposite key is kept secret and is used to decrypt.

Encrypted data are called or referred to as ciphertext, whereas encrypted data is referred to as plaintext.

How does data encryption work?

The most basic attack on encryption today is a brute force or trying many different keys until the right one is found. The length of a key determines how long it takes to find a correct password and affects how plausible this type of attack can be. It’s important to remember that as you increase the size for your key, there will also be an increased number of resources required.

Cipher breaking can be done in several ways. Side-channel attacks go after the implementation of a cipher, rather than its actual design or code. They are more successful when there is an error in system execution.

What does encrypted file mean and what are the solutions

What does encrypted data mean? Data encryption solutions for devices, email and data can provide a way to protect sensitive company information from being seen by unauthorized people. However, many companies have had issues with employees copying data onto removable media or uploading it into the cloud without proper protection.

Email control and encryption are other key components of a data loss prevention solution. Secure, encrypted email is the only answer for regulatory compliance, remote workforces, BYODs (bring your own devices), project outsourcing. A good data loss prevention solution allows employees to continue working through emails while the software automatically tags sensitive information in messages and attachments.

Data encryption sounds like a complicated, difficult process that your company should handle by itself. But data loss prevention software handles it without any problems and you don’t need to worry about it.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.

What is data encryption? 

Encryption definition: Data encryption translates data into another form or encryption code. It is commonly referred to as ciphertext and unencrypted (or plain) text.

What does encryption do?

What does encrypted mean? Data encryption is a way to protect digital data from being stolen or destroyed when it’s on computer systems and in transmissions. The old standard (DES) has been replaced by newer, more secure algorithms.

These algorithms protect the integrity of a message, and they also make sure it is coming from where you think it’s coming from. They provide confidentiality by preventing an unauthorized user to read or modify information in transit.

P

How does encryption work?

Data encryption is a process that encodes data with an algorithm and a key. After it’s encrypted, the only way to view its original form again is by decrypting it with the correct key.

Symmetric-key ciphers use the same key to encrypt and decrypt a message or file. The sender needs to exchange keys with the recipient before he can read it, which is why most data encryption services have adapted and now use an asymmetric algorithm for exchanging secret keys.

The Rivest-Sharmir-Adleman algorithm is a public key encryption meaning system that uses two different keys. One, the private key, should be kept secret and never shared with anyone else. The other one can be given to everyone because it doesn’t need protection.

Types of Encryption

Encryption is frequently used in one of two ways: with a symmetric key, or with an asymmetric key. An asymmetric key, often known as a secret key, employs a single key to encode and decode information. This is appropriate for one-on-one sharing and modest data collections. Asymmetric cryptography, often known as public-key cryptography, employs two connected keys — one private and one public. The encryption key is public and may be used to encrypt by anybody. The opposite key is kept secret and is used to decrypt.

Encrypted data are called or referred to as ciphertext, whereas encrypted data is referred to as plaintext.

How does data encryption work?

The most basic attack on encryption today is a brute force or trying many different keys until the right one is found. The length of a key determines how long it takes to find a correct password and affects how plausible this type of attack can be. It’s important to remember that as you increase the size for your key, there will also be an increased number of resources required.

Cipher breaking can be done in several ways. Side-channel attacks go after the implementation of a cipher, rather than its actual design or code. They are more successful when there is an error in system execution.

What does encrypted file mean and what are the solutions

What does encrypted data mean? Data encryption solutions for devices, email and data can provide a way to protect sensitive company information from being seen by unauthorized people. However, many companies have had issues with employees copying data onto removable media or uploading it into the cloud without proper protection.

Email control and encryption are other key components of a data loss prevention solution. Secure, encrypted email is the only answer for regulatory compliance, remote workforces, BYODs (bring your own devices), project outsourcing. A good data loss prevention solution allows employees to continue working through emails while the software automatically tags sensitive information in messages and attachments.

Data encryption sounds like a complicated, difficult process that your company should handle by itself. But data loss prevention software handles it without any problems and you don’t need to worry about it.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


In this article, we’re going to talk about cyber security and why it’s important. We’ll also go over how you can start building a program in your company.

Cyber Security Definition 

Computer security, also known as cybersecurity or information technology security, is the safeguarding of computer systems and networks against information disclosure, theft or damage to their hardware, software, or electronic data, as well as disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.Cyber security is a huge topic in the IT world. It’s basically about protecting networks, devices and programs from cyberattacks.


Cyber Security Technology

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


Cyber-threat classifications
Cyber-security counters three types of threats:

  1. Cybercrime encompasses both single actors and groups who target systems for financial gain or to cause disruption.
  2. Politically motivated information gathering is frequently used in cyber-attacks.
  3. Cyberterrorism aims to disrupt electronic systems in order to cause panic or fear.

Here are some common methods for jeopardizing cyber-security:

Malware

It is short for malicious software. Malware is software created by a cybercriminal or hacker to disrupt or damage a legitimate user’s computer. It is one of the most common cyber threats.

SQL (structured language query) injection

This is a type of cyber-attack used to gain access to and steal data from a database. Cybercriminals take advantage of flaws in data-driven applications to insert malicious code into a database via a malicious SQL statement. This gives them access to the database’s sensitive information.

Phishing

Phishing occurs when cybercriminals send emails that appear to be from a legitimate company and request sensitive information from victims. Phishing attacks are frequently used to trick people into providing credit card information and other personal information.

Man-in-the-middle attack

A man-in-the-middle attack is a type of cyber threat in which a cybercriminal intercepts communication between two people in order to steal data. For example, on an insecure WiFi network, an attacker could intercept data passing between the victim’s device and the network.

Denial-of-service attack

A denial-of-service attack occurs when cybercriminals overload networks and servers with traffic in order to prevent a computer system from fulfilling legitimate requests. This renders the system inoperable and prevents an organization from performing critical functions.

The Significance of Cyber Security Protection

Cybersecurity is important because it protects sensitive data like intellectual property, financial information and personal records. As the sophistication of cyberattacks grows, companies need to take steps to protect their systems.

What Does a Cyber Security System Entail

Cyber security covers a number of  things, including: -Protecting data on the company’s internal systems. This includes databases and anything else that can be accessed by an employee or authorized user through a computer system.

  • Network security is the process of protecting a network from intrusions and attacks.
  • When it comes to app development, you need constant updates and testing to ensure that your apps are secure from attacks.
  • Remote access is a necessary part of business, but it can also be dangerous because people often use unsecure connections. The endpoint security process protects remote access to the network.
  • Data security has become important in recent years, because it’s now easier than ever to steal information. Protecting company and customer data is an additional layer of security.
  • It is important to understand what each person has access too, in order to make sure there are no security breaches.
  • Protecting databases and infrastructure is important. They are equally as vulnerable to hacking, malware, etc.
  • Cloud computing is an increasing trend in the tech industry, but it’s also a challenge to secure data when everything is online.
  • Mobile devices are a security risk, and they involve all types of security challenges in themselves.
  • Disaster recovery and business continuity planning: In the event of a breach, natural disaster or other event data must be protected. For this reason you need to have a plan in place.

Cyber security is hard because there are always new threats coming out that we have to keep up with. The old approach of just defending the most important parts and keeping a list of known threats isn’t enough anymore, as those change quickly.

Organizing Cyber Security

The National Cyber Security Alliance, through SafeOnline.org, recommends that corporate management leads the charge in prioritizing cyber security across all business practices to protect assets and reputation.

Cyber security is a hot topic in many workplaces, and there are several ways to protect company data.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.

In this article, we’re going to talk about cyber security and why it’s important. We’ll also go over how you can start building a program in your company.

Cyber Security Definition 

Computer security, also known as cybersecurity or information technology security, is the safeguarding of computer systems and networks against information disclosure, theft or damage to their hardware, software, or electronic data, as well as disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.Cyber security is a huge topic in the IT world. It’s basically about protecting networks, devices and programs from cyberattacks.


Cyber Security Technology

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


Cyber-threat classifications
Cyber-security counters three types of threats:

  1. Cybercrime encompasses both single actors and groups who target systems for financial gain or to cause disruption.
  2. Politically motivated information gathering is frequently used in cyber-attacks.
  3. Cyberterrorism aims to disrupt electronic systems in order to cause panic or fear.

Here are some common methods for jeopardizing cyber-security:

Malware

It is short for malicious software. Malware is software created by a cybercriminal or hacker to disrupt or damage a legitimate user’s computer. It is one of the most common cyber threats.

SQL (structured language query) injection

This is a type of cyber-attack used to gain access to and steal data from a database. Cybercriminals take advantage of flaws in data-driven applications to insert malicious code into a database via a malicious SQL statement. This gives them access to the database’s sensitive information.

Phishing

Phishing occurs when cybercriminals send emails that appear to be from a legitimate company and request sensitive information from victims. Phishing attacks are frequently used to trick people into providing credit card information and other personal information.

Man-in-the-middle attack

A man-in-the-middle attack is a type of cyber threat in which a cybercriminal intercepts communication between two people in order to steal data. For example, on an insecure WiFi network, an attacker could intercept data passing between the victim’s device and the network.

Denial-of-service attack

A denial-of-service attack occurs when cybercriminals overload networks and servers with traffic in order to prevent a computer system from fulfilling legitimate requests. This renders the system inoperable and prevents an organization from performing critical functions.

The Significance of Cyber Security Protection

Cybersecurity is important because it protects sensitive data like intellectual property, financial information and personal records. As the sophistication of cyberattacks grows, companies need to take steps to protect their systems.

What Does a Cyber Security System Entail

Cyber security covers a number of  things, including: -Protecting data on the company’s internal systems. This includes databases and anything else that can be accessed by an employee or authorized user through a computer system.

  • Network security is the process of protecting a network from intrusions and attacks.
  • When it comes to app development, you need constant updates and testing to ensure that your apps are secure from attacks.
  • Remote access is a necessary part of business, but it can also be dangerous because people often use unsecure connections. The endpoint security process protects remote access to the network.
  • Data security has become important in recent years, because it’s now easier than ever to steal information. Protecting company and customer data is an additional layer of security.
  • It is important to understand what each person has access too, in order to make sure there are no security breaches.
  • Protecting databases and infrastructure is important. They are equally as vulnerable to hacking, malware, etc.
  • Cloud computing is an increasing trend in the tech industry, but it’s also a challenge to secure data when everything is online.
  • Mobile devices are a security risk, and they involve all types of security challenges in themselves.
  • Disaster recovery and business continuity planning: In the event of a breach, natural disaster or other event data must be protected. For this reason you need to have a plan in place.

Cyber security is hard because there are always new threats coming out that we have to keep up with. The old approach of just defending the most important parts and keeping a list of known threats isn’t enough anymore, as those change quickly.

Organizing Cyber Security

The National Cyber Security Alliance, through SafeOnline.org, recommends that corporate management leads the charge in prioritizing cyber security across all business practices to protect assets and reputation.

Cyber security is a hot topic in many workplaces, and there are several ways to protect company data.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


GLBA Meaning

GLBA stands for Gramm Leach Bliley Act. It is a federal law that requires financial institutions to share information in an open and transparent way, give customers the option of opting out if they want their personal data not shared with third parties, and apply specific protections for customer private data.

The GLBA is enforced by various federal agencies, state insurance oversight agencies and the FTC.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


GLBA Requirements

The act has three main sections, which are broken down into two rules and a set of provisions. The term “3 Rules” seems to have been adopted because the legislation is meant to be easy for people to understand.

These three measures are designed to help organizations covered by the legislation know how they’re doing.

  • The types of data to protect
  •  The bill will require employers to offer paid leave for employees who are not able to work because of illness or injury, pregnancy, childbirth and adoption.
  • Preventing unauthorized access to customer data

GLBA components:

The Financial Privacy Rule is a law that requires financial institutions to protect the privacy of consumers. This rule covers most personal information (name, date of birth, Social Security number) as well as transactional data (card numbers). It also includes private information you may acquire during transactions with these companies or entities.

The Safeguards Rule of GLBA ensures that those under the law have specific means to protect private information. For example, they need administrative, technical or physical safeguards for processing and storing customer data.

Notable requirements include:

  • Employee training
  • Proper software
  • There are many ways to test and monitor vulnerabilities on your website.

Pretexting Provisions: There are many scams to get personal information, and the GLBA tries to prevent this from happening. One way is by adding pretexting provisions which make it harder for these companies trying to steal data.

Advantages of GLBA Compliance

The GLBA Safeguards Rule protects both banks and their customers from unauthorized sharing or loss of private customer data. It also includes several privacy benefits for the bank’s clients, such as:

  • Private information needs to be protected from unauthorized access.
  • Customers need to know when their information is being shared and should be able to opt out of it.
  • When using the system, it must be recorded if someone tries to access a private record.

The GLBA helps protect consumer and customer records, which builds trust with customers. This results in repeat business for financial institutions.

GLBA Compliance

The GLBA requires financial institutions to protect their customers’ nonpublic personal information. The Safeguards Rule states that all covered financial institutions must create a written security plan, tailored specifically for the institution’s size and complexity. It also says each institution has to have an information protection program in place.

  • Designate a security manager to oversee the company’s information security program.
  • Identify the risks to customer information and assess how well current safeguards are controlling those risks.
  • Design and implement a safeguards program, such as the use of passwords to protect your important documents.
  • Make sure you work with service providers that have the appropriate safeguards, make sure your contract has these safeguards in it and also monitor how they are handling customer information.
  • Make changes to the program as needed, such as if there’s a change in business or operations.

The Safeguards Rule requires that financial institutions pay special attention to employee management, information systems and security during the implementation of an Information Security Plan.

GLBA Sanctions

Once a GLBA non-compliance allegation is proven, the punishment can have drastic consequences for both your business and personal life.

Some sanctions for non-compliance are:

If a financial institution is found in violation, they can be fined $100,000 for each offense. Likewise if an individual who was responsible for hiring practices at the company is found to have violated those policies and procedures then that person will also face fines of up to $10,000 per violation as well as prison time up to 5 years.

Models of Non-Compliance Allegations

There have been a few recent allegations, including: -A company was found to be discriminating against people of color in hiring practices. -One employee alleged that they were being harassed by their boss because of race and gender.

  • PayPal allegedly violated many regulations, including the Federal Trade Act and the GLBA. This one source said that PayPal also violates privacy laws by violating each of these regulations.
  • The FTC used the GLBA to enforce against some mortgage companies for violating certain terms.
  • The FTC filed a complaint and settlement against Mortgage Solutions FCS, doing business as Mount Diablo Lending, for posting sensitive personal information from individuals’ mortgage applications to Yelp reviews.

Best Ways To Maintain GLBA Compliance

The GLBA is about protecting consumer data by requiring financial institutions to protect confidentiality and security of customer information. If they don’t, then there could be penalties or even the end of their business.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.

GLBA Meaning

GLBA stands for Gramm Leach Bliley Act. It is a federal law that requires financial institutions to share information in an open and transparent way, give customers the option of opting out if they want their personal data not shared with third parties, and apply specific protections for customer private data.

The GLBA is enforced by various federal agencies, state insurance oversight agencies and the FTC.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


GLBA Requirements

The act has three main sections, which are broken down into two rules and a set of provisions. The term “3 Rules” seems to have been adopted because the legislation is meant to be easy for people to understand.

These three measures are designed to help organizations covered by the legislation know how they’re doing.

  • The types of data to protect
  •  The bill will require employers to offer paid leave for employees who are not able to work because of illness or injury, pregnancy, childbirth and adoption.
  • Preventing unauthorized access to customer data

GLBA components:

The Financial Privacy Rule is a law that requires financial institutions to protect the privacy of consumers. This rule covers most personal information (name, date of birth, Social Security number) as well as transactional data (card numbers). It also includes private information you may acquire during transactions with these companies or entities.

The Safeguards Rule of GLBA ensures that those under the law have specific means to protect private information. For example, they need administrative, technical or physical safeguards for processing and storing customer data.

Notable requirements include:

  • Employee training
  • Proper software
  • There are many ways to test and monitor vulnerabilities on your website.

Pretexting Provisions: There are many scams to get personal information, and the GLBA tries to prevent this from happening. One way is by adding pretexting provisions which make it harder for these companies trying to steal data.

Advantages of GLBA Compliance

The GLBA Safeguards Rule protects both banks and their customers from unauthorized sharing or loss of private customer data. It also includes several privacy benefits for the bank’s clients, such as:

  • Private information needs to be protected from unauthorized access.
  • Customers need to know when their information is being shared and should be able to opt out of it.
  • When using the system, it must be recorded if someone tries to access a private record.

The GLBA helps protect consumer and customer records, which builds trust with customers. This results in repeat business for financial institutions.

GLBA Compliance

The GLBA requires financial institutions to protect their customers’ nonpublic personal information. The Safeguards Rule states that all covered financial institutions must create a written security plan, tailored specifically for the institution’s size and complexity. It also says each institution has to have an information protection program in place.

  • Designate a security manager to oversee the company’s information security program.
  • Identify the risks to customer information and assess how well current safeguards are controlling those risks.
  • Design and implement a safeguards program, such as the use of passwords to protect your important documents.
  • Make sure you work with service providers that have the appropriate safeguards, make sure your contract has these safeguards in it and also monitor how they are handling customer information.
  • Make changes to the program as needed, such as if there’s a change in business or operations.

The Safeguards Rule requires that financial institutions pay special attention to employee management, information systems and security during the implementation of an Information Security Plan.

GLBA Sanctions

Once a GLBA non-compliance allegation is proven, the punishment can have drastic consequences for both your business and personal life.

Some sanctions for non-compliance are:

If a financial institution is found in violation, they can be fined $100,000 for each offense. Likewise if an individual who was responsible for hiring practices at the company is found to have violated those policies and procedures then that person will also face fines of up to $10,000 per violation as well as prison time up to 5 years.

Models of Non-Compliance Allegations

There have been a few recent allegations, including: -A company was found to be discriminating against people of color in hiring practices. -One employee alleged that they were being harassed by their boss because of race and gender.

  • PayPal allegedly violated many regulations, including the Federal Trade Act and the GLBA. This one source said that PayPal also violates privacy laws by violating each of these regulations.
  • The FTC used the GLBA to enforce against some mortgage companies for violating certain terms.
  • The FTC filed a complaint and settlement against Mortgage Solutions FCS, doing business as Mount Diablo Lending, for posting sensitive personal information from individuals’ mortgage applications to Yelp reviews.

Best Ways To Maintain GLBA Compliance

The GLBA is about protecting consumer data by requiring financial institutions to protect confidentiality and security of customer information. If they don’t, then there could be penalties or even the end of their business.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


What is Incident Response?

You should take six steps to make sure you are prepared for an incident. 

A Definition of Incident Response

The goal of a cyberattack is to keep the attack under wraps and limit damage. If you’re able, it’s important to get back on your feet quickly.

It’s important for organizations to have a plan in place that defines what constitutes an incident and provides clear guided steps. It should specify who is responsible for managing the process as well as those taking specific actions.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


Who Handles the Response to Security Incidents?

A computer incident response team (CIRT) is usually made up of security and general IT staff, along with members from the legal department. They are responsible for dealing with any cybersecurity threats in an organization. 

Six Steps for Effective Incident Response Handling

The SANS Institute provides six steps you should take to improve the response after a security incident has been discovered.

  • Preparation is the most important phase of incident response. It helps organizations know how well they will be able to respond if an attack happens. Preparations should involve policy, a plan for responding (strategy), communication, documentation, determining who in the organization will take part in incident response coverage and whether or not that person needs special access rights or tools.

Preparation is a crucial part of incident response. It helps organizations determine how well their CIRT will be able to respond to an incident.

  • To detect incidents, IT staff gathers any events from log files, monitoring tools and error messages to determine if an incident has occurred.

The first step in an effective incident response is to identify and detect incidents. To do this, IT staff gathers information from logs, monitoring tools, error messages and intrusion detection systems.

  • Containment is the top priority once an incident has been detected. Containment should be done as soon as possible to reduce damage and prevent further incidents or destruction of evidence.

To prevent the destruction of any evidence that may be needed later for prosecution, it’s important to take steps during containment. These include short-term and long-term containment as well as a system backup.

  • To eradicate a threat, you must remove it and clean the affected areas. Then ensure that no new threats remain.

Eradication is the phase of effective incident response that entails removing the threat and restoring affected systems to their previous state, ideally while minimizing data loss. Ensuring that every measure has been taken up until this point – including measures ensuring infected system are completely clean- are important for eradicating an attack.

  • Recovery is when you test, monitor, and validate systems while they are in production to make sure that they have not been compromised or re-infected. You also need to decide the date for restoring operations after a breach.

Recovery is the last step of incident response. It includes verifying that systems are not compromised or re-infected and restoring operations as soon as possible.

  • Lessons learned is a key component of incident response. It gives organizations the opportunity to update their incident responses with information that may have been missed during an event, plus provide documentation for future incidents.

Lessons learned is the critical stage of incident response. Lessons learned reports give a clear review of the entire incident and can be used during recap meetings, training materials for new CIRT members, or benchmarks to compare against in future incidents.

A clear-cut plan and course of action is the key to effective incident response. Without proper preparation, it’s too late once a breach or attack has occurred.

We’ve all read articles about how to protect your data, and what steps you should take if something happens. But many of us have never been a part of incident response.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


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What is Adware?

Adware is the term for software that displays ads to you when you’re online in order to generate revenue. It’s usually not malicious, but it can often be associated with malvertising. Non-malicious adware collects data from your consent like downloading a free app and opting into seeing their ads instead of paying for an ad-free version.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.

To put it quite simply, to protect yourself from adware you would purchase SecurityStudio! smiley


Adware definition

When a company chooses to use adware, they bundle it with the program. This means ads will load automatically as soon as you start using that software. Ad space is bought by other companies who want to market their products or services and make some money from those ads being displayed on your computer screen. The revenue made from selling this ad space can be used for user and development costs.

About adware 

Adware is a type of software that can be malicious or not. It tracks your activity, which makes it spyware and sometimes even malware. This article will educate you on how to prevent adware on computer.

How to protect your computer from adware

Use cautious and safe computing practices. That means you should think twice before downloading and installing any new software, especially freeware. Before agreeing to the terms and conditions, read them like a lawyer and exit the download process if anything seems like consent to install adware. Avoid pirate sites and illicit downloads, and never launch an app from an unknown source, even if it comes from recognized email contact.

Finally, before you take any of the above steps, download a reliable cybersecurity tool for your PC or mobile device. Scans should be performed on a regular basis, and updates should be kept up to date. Of course, any of our Malwarebytes anti-malware products, including Malwarebytes for Windows, Malwarebytes for Mac, Malwarebytes for Android, Malwarebytes for Chromebook, and Malwarebytes for iOS, are wise precautions. You can live an adware-free online existence by equipping yourself with information and defending yourself with a strong cybersecurity program.

How to prevent adware

The different adware prevention tactics you use, the stronger your defense is against malicious adware. Here’s how to get rid of adware, or at the very least, ideas for how to protect yourself from spyware: 

  • To avoid clicking on malicious ads, use an ad blocker in your browser. This can keep you safe and also stop drive-by downloads.
  • In order to avoid malicious adware, you should pay for the service that you are using. The majority of businesses don’t serve ads to premium subscription users, which helps ensure they’re safe from harmful malware.
  • It’s not worth the risk of buying a low-cost Android device and risking infection. Stick with trusted companies that have reputable security features in place.
  • Some antivirus programs can block malicious adware, but they may not be able to tell the difference between a legitimate and an illegitimate program. In this case, it’s necessary to use more aggressive methods.
  • If your device is being impacted by unwanted programs, then adware removal software can help clean it up.

Organizations need to be aware of the risks and benefits. Users also have a responsibility- they should decide which programs are worth paying for instead of just downloading them, in order to avoid the adware.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.

What is Adware?

Adware is the term for software that displays ads to you when you’re online in order to generate revenue. It’s usually not malicious, but it can often be associated with malvertising. Non-malicious adware collects data from your consent like downloading a free app and opting into seeing their ads instead of paying for an ad-free version.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.

To put it quite simply, to protect yourself from adware you would purchase SecurityStudio! smiley


Adware definition

When a company chooses to use adware, they bundle it with the program. This means ads will load automatically as soon as you start using that software. Ad space is bought by other companies who want to market their products or services and make some money from those ads being displayed on your computer screen. The revenue made from selling this ad space can be used for user and development costs.

About adware 

Adware is a type of software that can be malicious or not. It tracks your activity, which makes it spyware and sometimes even malware. This article will educate you on how to prevent adware on computer.

How to protect your computer from adware

Use cautious and safe computing practices. That means you should think twice before downloading and installing any new software, especially freeware. Before agreeing to the terms and conditions, read them like a lawyer and exit the download process if anything seems like consent to install adware. Avoid pirate sites and illicit downloads, and never launch an app from an unknown source, even if it comes from recognized email contact.

Finally, before you take any of the above steps, download a reliable cybersecurity tool for your PC or mobile device. Scans should be performed on a regular basis, and updates should be kept up to date. Of course, any of our Malwarebytes anti-malware products, including Malwarebytes for Windows, Malwarebytes for Mac, Malwarebytes for Android, Malwarebytes for Chromebook, and Malwarebytes for iOS, are wise precautions. You can live an adware-free online existence by equipping yourself with information and defending yourself with a strong cybersecurity program.

How to prevent adware

The different adware prevention tactics you use, the stronger your defense is against malicious adware. Here’s how to get rid of adware, or at the very least, ideas for how to protect yourself from spyware: 

  • To avoid clicking on malicious ads, use an ad blocker in your browser. This can keep you safe and also stop drive-by downloads.
  • In order to avoid malicious adware, you should pay for the service that you are using. The majority of businesses don’t serve ads to premium subscription users, which helps ensure they’re safe from harmful malware.
  • It’s not worth the risk of buying a low-cost Android device and risking infection. Stick with trusted companies that have reputable security features in place.
  • Some antivirus programs can block malicious adware, but they may not be able to tell the difference between a legitimate and an illegitimate program. In this case, it’s necessary to use more aggressive methods.
  • If your device is being impacted by unwanted programs, then adware removal software can help clean it up.

Organizations need to be aware of the risks and benefits. Users also have a responsibility- they should decide which programs are worth paying for instead of just downloading them, in order to avoid the adware.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


PCI DSS Meaning

So what is PCI Compliance exactly? The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an information security standard for organizations that deal with branded credit cards from major card schemes. PCI DSS is a set of requirements to ensure that all companies process, store, or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. It was designed in 2006 and released by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) who then manages compliance.

This article provides a comprehensive overview of PCI compliance.

  • A list of resources for understanding PCI SSC Data Security Standards.
  • PCI DSS is a set of 12 requirements that need to be met in order for your company’s data security to be up-to-date.
  • Benefits of PCI Compliance.
  • The dangers of not being compliant.
  • This article gives 18 different tips from PCS DSS experts that they collected.

Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


PCI Standards

The PCI Security Standards Council provides all the information and resources necessary to keep card data secure.

PCI SSC offers a wide range of tools and resources to protect cardholder data.

  • Self-Assessment Questionnaires are used to prove that companies meet PCI DSS compliance.
  • There are requirements for PIN transaction security devices, and a list of approved ones.
  • If you’re a software vendor, PA-DSS and the list of Validated Payment Applications can help ensure your payment application is secure.
  • The ASV List is a public resource for people to find the best scanning vendors in their area. The list includes all of the approved qualified security assessors (QSAs) and payment application qualified security assessors (PA-QSAs).Article: I’m often surprised by how few companies are taking advantage of this opportunity, even though it’s free
  • There are a lot of people who can do this work.
  • This is not a system for reducing risk, but rather the PA-QSAs are intended to help improve it.
  • Only scanning vendors that have been approved are allowed to scan the items in this area.
  • There’s an education program for people who want to become Internal Security Assessors (ISA)

PCI DSS Compliance Requirements

1. Establish and Maintain Firewalls

Firewalls are a key component of security. They block access from foreign or unknown entities attempting to get into private data.

2. Adequate Password Protections

Too often, businesses fail to change the default passwords on devices. This can be a major security risk.

3. Safeguard Cardholder Data

The third requirement of PCI DSS compliance is to encrypt all card data with certain algorithms. This encryption must be done by creating an encryption key, which also needs to be encrypted for compliance purposes.

4. Encrypt Data Transmision

Companies should only send customer data to know locations, and not unknown ones. They also shouldn’t ever share account numbers with these places.

5. Use and Maintain Anti-Virus Software

Anti-virus software is a good practice outside of PCI compliance. However, this type of software must be installed on all devices that interact with or store PAN cards. This means you’ll need to purchase anti-virus from your POS provider and update it regularly.

6. Correctly Updated Software

It is necessary for businesses to update their firewalls and anti-virus software often. It’s also important that all pieces of business software are updated, as most will have security measures like updates or patches included in them.

7. Limit Data Access

Cardholder data can only be given to those who need it. All staff, executives and third parties should not have access to this information unless they are specifically required by PCI DSS.

8. Access IDs with Distinctive Chacteristics

When working with card holder data, employees should have individual credentials and identification to access the encrypted information. There shouldn’t be a single login for multiple people that know the username and password because this creates more vulnerability in case of security breach.

9. Limit Physical Access

Any cardholder data should be kept in a secure location. Both physical, written or typed information and digital-kept (e.g., on hard drive) should be locked away in an area that is only accessible to certain personnel with limited access when the sensitive data is accessed.

10. Maintain Access Logs

I’ve seen many companies not keep proper records of how they access sensitive data. They need to document the number of times it happens and where that information is stored.

11. Perform a vulnerability scan and testing

There are many possible threats that can happen to a company and the PCI DSS requirement of regular scans and vulnerability testing helps limit these.

12. Policies should be documented.

The company will need to keep track of everything from equipment and software, to how employees use it. Any information that goes in or out should be recorded.

Pros of PCI Compliance

PCI compliance is difficult, especially for large organizations. The maze of standards and issues can be overwhelming to handle on your own.

The PCI SSC says that there are many benefits of compliance, but if you don’t comply with them it could have serious consequences. For example:

  • PCI Compliance is a measure of security for your systems, and it’s important because customers will trust you with their payment card information. And once they have confidence in you as a company, they’ll come back to do business again.
  • If you want to improve your reputation with acquirers and payment brands, it’s important that you make sure to comply with the PCI standards.
  • PCI compliance prevents security breaches and theft of customer data.
  • If you want to be PCI compliant, then there are a number of other regulations that it is best for you to comply with.
  • PCI compliance is an important part of any security strategy.
  • PCI Compliance is an important factor in improving the efficiency of IT infrastructure.

Issues Posed by PCI Non-Compliance

PCI SSC warns that failing to meet PCI Compliance after working hard to build your brand and get customers, could potentially lead you losing them. By meeting compliance requirements for the data security initiative, though, you are protecting your customer’s sensitive information so they can continue being a customer.

  • Data that is stolen from a company can be very damaging.
  • It’s important to be mindful of how damaging bad publicity can be not just in the moment, but for years into the future.
  • There are many risks associated with account data breaches, including catastrophic losses of sales and relationships.
  • All of these things happen when a company hires the wrong person for a job, and it’s costly.

Data Security is a more manageable task when you have the right software and services. Choose data loss prevention software that can accurately classify your cardholder information so you know it’s secure.

Guideline for Meeting PCI-DSS Compliance

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a set of guidelines for any company that accepts, stores, processes or transmits credit card information. These standards have been created to protect consumers from fraud and theft.

To learn what companies need to do and know about compliance with PCI-DSS, we reached out to a panel of InfoSec pros and asked them:
What are the most important things that every company needs to comply with in order for their customers’ data not be compromised?

What are the best steps for mainting PCI Compliance

Have a look at our panel of security professionals and PCI-DSS experts:

  • Mike Baker
  • Cedric Savarese
  • Ian McClarty
  • Ben Zilberman
  • Steve Dickson
  • Tim Critchley
  • Jennifer Glass
  • Ellen Cunningham
  • Jake Posey
  • Evaldas Alexander
  • Dmytro Lanovskyi
  • Geoffrey Scott
  • McCall Robison
  • Gregory Morawietz
  • Carmine Mastropierro
  • Chad Reid
  • Mike Mood
  • lmie Sham Ku

Mike Baker

@Mosaic451

Mike Baker is the Founder and Managing Partner at Mosaic451, a cyber security company with expertise in building, operating and defending some of the most highly-secure networks. He has decades of experience monitoring and securing government organizations.

“PCI compliance is not a guarantee that a retailer’s infrastructure is immune to breaches…”

It’s more of a challenge to stay ahead of cybercriminals as they become increasingly sophisticated. A hacker isn’t just after your credit card number – it wants access to everything about you, including all the data that can be used against you.

To be compliant and prevent a POS system from being compromised, merchants need to take several measures.

It’s important for employees to monitor self-checkout terminals, kiosks, and other devices that may be in the store. They should make sure they are operating properly.

Thieves can get your POS data by compromising the system itself or installing card skimmers. The introduction of new chip cards will eliminate the threat of card skimmers, but many retailers have yet to update terminals that accept them because they cannot support EMV-enabled software.

I have to make sure that both the point-of-sale and operating systems are up to date.

Cybersecurity is constantly changing. Experts are finding new ways to patch vulnerabilities while hackers find new systems to hack into, so POS software releases frequent updates that address the most recent security threats.

I always change the default passwords of all my devices, and I recommend that you do too.

When installing new hardware, the default password for it should be changed as soon as possible. This is to avoid hackers from trying out passwords that are publicly available.

The POS system should not be connected to any other network, including the internet.

It’s not a good idea to hook up your POS system to the Wi-Fi or connect it with your corporate network. It can be hacked and that could affect both of them.

When purchasing POS systems, always make sure they come from a reputable dealer.

Retailers and restaurants have very tight budgets, so they should be careful about who they purchase POS systems from. It is important to buy this system only from a reputable dealer.

Cedric Savarese

Savarese min

@cedsav

Cedric Savarese is the CEO of FormAssembly, a company that provides enterprise form solutions. He has been in this position since 2006.

“Best practices for meeting PCI-DSS compliance include…”

The goal of the article is to provide perspective about your job, and identify goals that you can work towards.

The goal of PCI compliance is to keep cardholder data secure, not just make reports.

It’s important to make sure that your company is following all the security protocols in order to protect cardholder data. If you don’t, it could be vulnerable for hackers.

Compliance is more important than risk, security.

PCI compliance may be easy to attain, but companies need to focus on risk management. Security is the primary step in mitigating risks and achieving PCI compliance.

Frequency of audits and scans.

It is a never-ending process. You can’t just scan and monitor; you need to mitigate as well.

Ownership

The PCI compliance manager should have enough responsibility, authority and budget to do their job well.

Balancing business priorities and security costs is a difficult balancing act.

One of the biggest challenges for small businesses is balancing security while also growing. They want to make sure information security and compliance are considered an investment rather than a cost center.

Ian McClarty

@phoenixnap

Ian McClarty has been in the IT industry for over 20 years. He is currently CEO and President of PhoenixNAP Global IT Services.

“When dealing with PCI compliance…”

When it comes to protecting your cardholder data (CHD), there are a few best practices that can help you achieve PCI compliance.

  • If you want to keep your data safe, make sure that it is separated from the rest of the company’s. This way, if something happens with one cardholder environment (CHE), it will not affect all other environments.
  • Encrypt your data – All CHD should be encrypted, or tokenized. This includes encrypting the card number in storage to keep it secure.
  • You need to control access to your data. It’s important that the HR department doesn’t have any access at all and system administrators are able to do their job.
  • Monitor your data for security issues. A recent study found that attackers usually break in through the back door, so you need to be aware of everything going on with your system.

Ben Zilberman

Zilberman min

@radware

Ben Zilberman is a product marketing manager with Radware, working on the security team. His focus has been application security and threat intelligence, because he wants to work closely with other teams in order to raise awareness of high profile or impending attacks.

“There are several practices to ensure you meet the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)…”

To start, you need to make sure that your security protocols are up-to-date. SSLTLS is not sufficient for PCI compliance anymore, so by June 30th of 2018 you must have upgraded to a more secure alternative. Another requirement for meeting PCI requirements is using strong access controls and creating very long passwords with different types of characters that avoid dictionary words. You also need remote communication protection against eavesdropping or other risks while keeping data safe on APIs as well as encrypted certifications and keys in order to remain compliant.

Steve Dickson

@Netwrix

Steve Dickson is an expert in information security and the CEO of Netwrix, a company that specializes in data security. He lives in Irvine.

“The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) aims to…”

This standard is for anyone who handles credit card information, including merchants, processors and issuers.

If you want to comply with PCI-DSS, here are three things you should do:

Conduct regular risk assessments. PCI-DSS recommends that you conduct a risk assessment in order to identify the likelihood and magnitude of harm from various threats, as well as determine whether additional controls should be put into place.

User behavior analytics can help you spot unusual user activity that might be indicative of insider misuse or hackers trying to gain access to IT infrastructure.

Data discovery and classification can help you find out where your sensitive data is in order to set appropriate levels of controls.

Tim Critchley

Critchley min

@Semafone

Tim is an experienced director of technology start-ups in both product and service focused sectors. He has been the CEO of Semafone since 2009, when he helped secure Series A funding from Octopus Investments.

“Complying with the complex PCI-DSS can be quite simple through a tactic called descoping…”

The PCI-DSS considers any person, system, or piece of technology that touches cardholder data as in scope. This means there are a lot more entities to be concerned about and it can get tricky.

If you have a contact center, and they accept customer payments over the phone, it’s possible to use DTMF masking so that sensitive data is out of reach from fraudsters.

Jennifer Glass

@creditcardsnj

Jennifer Glass is the CEO of Credit Cards, NJ (CCNJ) and has been recognized as an expert in the payment processing industry for more than 15 years.

“First is the obvious…”

Make sure that all people in the organization are following common sense practices and not leaving credit card data lying around. Second, if a payment processing system is connected to other systems on the same server(s), get it off those servers so malware can’t attack them.

Ellen Cunningham

Cunningham min

@CardFellow

Ellen Cunningham is a marketing manager for CardFellow, and she enjoys the challenge of explaining complex topics. She believes in their mission to empower business owners through education.

“PCI compliance is roughly split into 6 ‘categories’ with steps in each category…”

To make sure you’re compliant, work with your credit card processor or a security company.

The six main areas of compliance are securing the processing network, protecting cardholder data from malware and hackers, using strong access control measures to protect systems against hacking or other unauthorized access by a malicious outsider. Monitoring networks for any potential vulnerabilities is also important.

Setting up a secure network with firewalls, changing default passwords to more secure options and updating other security settings is essential.

To protect cardholder data, you should encrypt the data during transmission and store it off of your servers. Most processors offer a secure vault for digital storage to help with compliance.

To protect your system, you should install and regularly update antivirus software as well as patch any vulnerabilities.

Strong access control is when employees are only given the information they need to do their job, and not more. It also includes limiting physical access so that cardholder data isn’t stolen.

Tracking and testing networks includes monitoring who has access to cardholder data on your network, as well as finding out what they’re doing with that information. It also means checking for security flaws or vulnerabilities.

Creating an information security policy involves stating how your company will handle PCI-DSS and who is responsible for which components of it.

Jake Posey

@jacobposey

Prepaid Program Management LLC is a company that teaches FinTechs and entrepreneurs how to launch prepaid card programs. They also offer training for people who are interested in the industry.

“There are three areas I recommend companies focus on…”

The first way to avoid waiting until annual reviews is by doing mini audits. I’ve seen too many companies wait until the last minute and then find out they’re not PCI compliant.

Second, companies should make sure that their employees are restricted to the job they were hired for. This is especially important in Fintechs where rockstars can do many jobs.

Training is important, but companies need to invest in industry-specific training so that employees can understand the nuances of their work. Otherwise, they may not be able to fully grasp what was taught.

Evaldas Alexander

Alexander min

@rankpay

Evaldas Alexander is the CTO of RankPay, a company that helps small businesses get higher rankings.

“PCI-DSS compliance has several different Self Assessment Questionnaires (SAQs) that must be followed to be compliant…”

A shorter SAQ is better because it’s less likely that you have to deal with a customer service rep updating credit card information on behalf of the client. The wiki should be documented and audited so employees can’t break any policies.

Dmytro Lanovskyi

@intellias

Dmytro Lanovskyi, who is a CISSP on one of Intellias’ client projects.

“The best practices for meeting PCI-DSS compliance include…”

First, you need to assign someone who has experience with the compliance process and security. This person would be responsible for coordinating all of your company’s security activities.

You need to start building your architecture with PCI-DSS requirements in mind. You can’t just build something and then try to fit it into the framework afterwards.

You need to do an in-depth risk assessment before you can determine what security needs are.

Make sure you have control over how and when monitoring systems are used.

Make sure you have a security system in place and know what to do if anything goes wrong.

It’s important to set some goals before you start the hiring process.

The PCI-DSS certification process is expensive and time intensive, so be ready to put in the work.

The list of documentation you need to prepare includes:
-A description of your company and services
-An overview about the business, including what you do best

  • Antivirus Policy
  • Cardholder Data Policy
  • Firewall and Router Policy
  • Information Security Policy
  • Password Policy
  • Physical Security Policy
  • System Configuration Policy
  • This policy is to help maintain a safe and secure environment for all employees.
  • The company has a process for testing systems and processes.
  • To combat security breaches, companies should have a policy in place that defines the steps to take when an incident occurs.
  • We have a policy that states what is owned by the company and how it should be used. Anyone who breaks this rule will face disciplinary action.
  • Company policy on developing and designing new software for employees
  • The company has a policy on how we should manage our service providers.
  • Access Control Policy
  • A program is in place to make sure employees are aware of information security risks.
  • This policy statement covers the responsibilities of information security for employees.
  • This template is a contract that guides the relationship between an individual and their company.
  • Data Classification Policy
  • Data Protection Policy
  • Data Management Policy

PCI-DSS compliance is a daily requirement, even after the successful audit.

The CISSP is a certification that allows people to control all security activities.

Geoffrey Scott

ScottG min

@PayMotile

Geoffrey Scott, a consultant at PayMotile.com works to find the perfect payment processor for each individual company.

“PCI-DSS compliance is standard practice for payment processors…”

If you’re just starting out with card transactions, it might be difficult to comply. Here are a couple things that will help:
– You should always use strong passwords and change them often.
– Always keep your system updated so hackers can’t access any information.

2. Stop collecting customer information.

The more data you collect, the harder it is to protect. For instance, e-commerce businesses who collect and store user data have to fill out a robust form of compliance called PCI SAQ (self-assessment questionnaire). If they leave such collection up to third parties then their compliance will be easier with less questions on the SAQ.

In light of the GDPR, it’s a good idea to limit and closely monitor data collection. You want to reduce your company’s liability in case there is an error or lawsuit.

If you’re not sure what the best payment processor for your company is, then it’s important to communicate with them. You can’t start a business without knowing how payments work.

PCI-DSS compliance is governed by a standard set of rules, but your payment processor may have additional measures that you’ll need to follow. The last thing either party wants is for there to be any uncertainty about PCI-DSS compliance.

McCall Robison

@BestCompanyUSA

McCall Robison manages the Merchant Accounts Blog for BestCompany.com and she is a Content Specialist.

“What some people don’t realize about PCI-DSS compliance is that…”

You can’t just do it once and think you’re done. You have to keep doing this periodically so that your business is compliant with the PCI-DSS standards.

You need to make sure you are complying with PCI-DSS standards. If not, you must take the necessary steps and eliminate any vulnerabilities.

Gregory Morawietz

Morawietz min

@SinglePointOC

Gregory is the VP of Operations at Single Point of Contact. He has over twenty years experience in IT Security and consulting, along with hundreds of firms to show for it.

“The best practices for meeting PCI-DSS compliance are to…”

Always have the right tools to protect your cardholder data, including a vulnerability management program and an access control system. Keep on top of any potential problems by monitoring networks regularly, testing them often, and implementing security policies.

Carmine Mastropierro

@mastro_digital

Carmine Mastropierro is a self-made man who has created three successful businesses, and he’s written for GQ Magazine, Postmates, Marketo.

Article: A new study published in the Journal of Business Ethics found that people with multiple jobs were more likely to experience burnout.

“To meet PCI-DSS compliance…”

If you want to keep your customer data safe, first make sure that the website uses SSL certificates. This is an extra layer of security for customers and it’s required by major payment gateways. Secondly, once this has been taken care of, ensure that you have policies in place for keeping customer data secure (e.g., regular updates). Finally PCI compliance should be updated systems – databases need to be modernized with browsers and firewalls.

Chad Reid

Reid min

@JotForm

Chad Reid is the Director of Communications at JotForm, which provides form software that complies with PCI-DSS standards.

“I think one of the most important aspects of meeting PCI-DSS compliance as a service provider is…”

It’s important to have a top-notch, 3rd party security assessment. This will ensure you can show customers tangible proof of your compliance and go a long way in terms of their trust.

Mike Mood

@LamoodBigHats

Mike is the founder of Lamood Big Hats and WalletGear. He started making hats for people with large heads, as well as wallets.

“One of the best practices in meeting PCI-DSS compliance is to…”

You should never store credit card information on your servers. Use a third-party payment processor that is already PCI compliant like Paypal, Authorize.net, etc., to make sure the data is safe and avoid vulnerabilities.

You will need to make sure your e-commerce software is up-to-date with the latest patches. If you have a physical retail store, you will need to make sure that it’s not connected wirelessly and maintain a list of wireless access points. You should also consider having strong security measures in place for customer data.

Ilmie Sham Ku

Ku min

@BlueLinkERP

Ilmie Sham Ku is in charge of content marketing for Blue Link ERP.

“More and more retail businesses are beginning to…”

If your company deals with cardholder data, you need to be very careful when it comes to security. PCI-DSS standards are in place for this reason and ensure that the customer’s information is kept safe.

  • Employees may put credit card information in unencrypted fields just because it’s a habit. It could also be that they don’t have easy access to an encrypted database, so the only choice is to save the information on their computer.
  • Data migration: transferring your company’s credit card information from an unsecure database to a secure one can be time-consuming and tedious, but it is necessary.

To avoid this type of situation, companies must have proper process for accepting credit card information and train their employees on PCI Compliance. Companies should also use accounting software that includes separate databases to store sensitive data like credit cards.

Maintaining PCI-DSS compliance is an important task for any business. If you are not compliant, then your company will have to deal with fines and other consequences.


Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.

PCI DSS Meaning

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an information security standard for organizations that deal with branded credit cards from major card schemes. PCI DSS is a set of requirements to ensure that all companies process, store, or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. It was designed in 2006 and released by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) who then manages compliance.

This article provides a comprehensive overview of PCI compliance.

  • A list of resources for understanding PCI SSC Data Security Standards.
  • PCI DSS is a set of 12 requirements that need to be met in order for your company’s data security to be up-to-date.
  • Benefits of PCI Compliance.
  • The dangers of not being compliant.
  • This article gives 18 different tips from PCS DSS experts that they collected.

Protect Your Organization from Cybersecurity Threats

SecurityStudio help information security leaders at organizations ensure they’re protected against cybersecurity threats, stay insurable, and legally defensible with our risk assessment and risk management software. Schedule a demo to learn how we can help.


PCI Standards

The PCI Security Standards Council provides all the information and resources necessary to keep card data secure.

PCI SSC offers a wide range of tools and resources to protect cardholder data.

  • Self-Assessment Questionnaires are used to prove that companies meet PCI DSS compliance.
  • There are requirements for PIN transaction security devices, and a list of approved ones.
  • If you’re a software vendor, PA-DSS and the list of Validated Payment Applications can help ensure your payment application is secure.
  • The ASV List is a public resource for people to find the best scanning vendors in their area. The list includes all of the approved qualified security assessors (QSAs) and payment application qualified security assessors (PA-QSAs).Article: I’m often surprised by how few companies are taking advantage of this opportunity, even though it’s free
  • There are a lot of people who can do this work.
  • This is not a system for reducing risk, but rather the PA-QSAs are intended to help improve it.
  • Only scanning vendors that have been approved are allowed to scan the items in this area.
  • There’s an education program for people who want to become Internal Security Assessors (ISA)

PCI DSS Compliance Requirements

1. Establish and Maintain Firewalls

Firewalls are a key component of security. They block access from foreign or unknown entities attempting to get into private data.

2. Adequate Password Protections

Too often, businesses fail to change the default passwords on devices. This can be a major security risk.

3. Safeguard Cardholder Data

The third requirement of PCI DSS compliance is to encrypt all card data with certain algorithms. This encryption must be done by creating an encryption key, which also needs to be encrypted for compliance purposes.

4. Encrypt Data Transmision

Companies should only send customer data to know locations, and not unknown ones. They also shouldn’t ever share account numbers with these places.

5. Use and Maintain Anti-Virus Software

Anti-virus software is a good practice outside of PCI compliance. However, this type of software must be installed on all devices that interact with or store PAN cards. This means you’ll need to purchase anti-virus from your POS provider and update it regularly.

6. Correctly Updated Software

It is necessary for businesses to update their firewalls and anti-virus software often. It’s also important that all pieces of business software are updated, as most will have security measures like updates or patches included in them.

7. Limit Data Access

Cardholder data can only be given to those who need it. All staff, executives and third parties should not have access to this information unless they are specifically required by PCI DSS.

8. Access IDs with Distinctive Chacteristics

When working with card holder data, employees should have individual credentials and identification to access the encrypted information. There shouldn’t be a single login for multiple people that know the username and password because this creates more vulnerability in case of security breach.

9. Limit Physical Access

Any cardholder data should be kept in a secure location. Both physical, written or typed information and digital-kept (e.g., on hard drive) should be locked away in an area that is only accessible to certain personnel with limited access when the sensitive data is accessed.

10. Maintain Access Logs

I’ve seen many companies not keep proper records of how they access sensitive data. They need to document the number of times it happens and where that information is stored.

11. Perform a vulnerability scan and testing

There are many possible threats that can happen to a company and the PCI DSS requirement of regular scans and vulnerability testing helps limit these.

12. Policies should be documented.

The company will need to keep track of everything from equipment and software, to how employees use it. Any information that goes in or out should be recorded.

Pros of PCI Compliance

PCI compliance is difficult, especially for large organizations. The maze of standards and issues can be overwhelming to handle on your own.

The PCI SSC says that there are many benefits of compliance, but if you don’t comply with them it could have serious consequences. For example:

  • PCI Compliance is a measure of security for your systems, and it’s important because customers will trust you with their payment card information. And once they have confidence in you as a company, they’ll come back to do business again.
  • If you want to improve your reputation with acquirers and payment brands, it’s important that you make sure to comply with the PCI standards.
  • PCI compliance prevents security breaches and theft of customer data.
  • If you want to be PCI compliant, then there are a number of other regulations that it is best for you to comply with.
  • PCI compliance is an important part of any security strategy.
  • PCI Compliance is an important factor in improving the efficiency of IT infrastructure.

Issues Posed by PCI Non-Compliance

PCI SSC warns that failing to meet PCI Compliance after working hard to build your brand and get customers, could potentially lead you losing them. By meeting compliance requirements for the data security initiative, though, you are protecting your customer’s sensitive information so they can continue being a customer.

  • Data that is stolen from a company can be very damaging.
  • It’s important to be mindful of how damaging bad publicity can be not just in the moment, but for years into the future.
  • There are many risks associated with account data breaches, including catastrophic losses of sales and relationships.
  • All of these things happen when a company hires the wrong person for a job, and it’s costly.

Data Security is a more manageable task when you have the right software and services. Choose data loss prevention software that can accurately classify your cardholder information so you know it’s secure.

Guideline for Meeting PCI-DSS Compliance

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a set of guidelines for any company that accepts, stores, processes or transmits credit card information. These standards have been created to protect consumers from fraud and theft.

To learn what companies need to do and know about compliance with PCI-DSS, we reached out to a panel of InfoSec pros and asked them:
What are the most important things that every company needs to comply with in order for their customers’ data not be compromised?

What are the best steps for mainting PCI Compliance

Have a look at our panel of security professionals and PCI-DSS experts:

  • Mike Baker
  • Cedric Savarese
  • Ian McClarty
  • Ben Zilberman
  • Steve Dickson
  • Tim Critchley
  • Jennifer Glass
  • Ellen Cunningham
  • Jake Posey
  • Evaldas Alexander
  • Dmytro Lanovskyi
  • Geoffrey Scott
  • McCall Robison
  • Gregory Morawietz
  • Carmine Mastropierro
  • Chad Reid
  • Mike Mood
  • lmie Sham Ku

Mike Baker

@Mosaic451

Mike Baker is the Founder and Managing Partner at Mosaic451, a cyber security company with expertise in building, operating and defending some of the most highly-secure networks. He has decades of experience monitoring and securing government organizations.

“PCI compliance is not a guarantee that a retailer’s infrastructure is immune to breaches…”

It’s more of a challenge to stay ahead of cybercriminals as they become increasingly sophisticated. A hacker isn’t just after your credit card number – it wants access to everything about you, including all the data that can be used against you.

To be compliant and prevent a POS system from being compromised, merchants need to take several measures.

It’s important for employees to monitor self-checkout terminals, kiosks, and other devices that may be in the store. They should make sure they are operating properly.

Thieves can get your POS data by compromising the system itself or installing card skimmers. The introduction of new chip cards will eliminate the threat of card skimmers, but many retailers have yet to update terminals that accept them because they cannot support EMV-enabled software.

I have to make sure that both the point-of-sale and operating systems are up to date.

Cybersecurity is constantly changing. Experts are finding new ways to patch vulnerabilities while hackers find new systems to hack into, so POS software releases frequent updates that address the most recent security threats.

I always change the default passwords of all my devices, and I recommend that you do too.

When installing new hardware, the default password for it should be changed as soon as possible. This is to avoid hackers from trying out passwords that are publicly available.

The POS system should not be connected to any other network, including the internet.

It’s not a good idea to hook up your POS system to the Wi-Fi or connect it with your corporate network. It can be hacked and that could affect both of them.

When purchasing POS systems, always make sure they come from a reputable dealer.

Retailers and restaurants have very tight budgets, so they should be careful about who they purchase POS systems from. It is important to buy this system only from a reputable dealer.

Cedric Savarese

Savarese min

@cedsav

Cedric Savarese is the CEO of FormAssembly, a company that provides enterprise form solutions. He has been in this position since 2006.

“Best practices for meeting PCI-DSS compliance include…”

The goal of the article is to provide perspective about your job, and identify goals that you can work towards.

The goal of PCI compliance is to keep cardholder data secure, not just make reports.

It’s important to make sure that your company is following all the security protocols in order to protect cardholder data. If you don’t, it could be vulnerable for hackers.

Compliance is more important than risk, security.

PCI compliance may be easy to attain, but companies need to focus on risk management. Security is the primary step in mitigating risks and achieving PCI compliance.

Frequency of audits and scans.

It is a never-ending process. You can’t just scan and monitor; you need to mitigate as well.

Ownership

The PCI compliance manager should have enough responsibility, authority and budget to do their job well.

Balancing business priorities and security costs is a difficult balancing act.

One of the biggest challenges for small businesses is balancing security while also growing. They want to make sure information security and compliance are considered an investment rather than a cost center.

Ian McClarty

@phoenixnap

Ian McClarty has been in the IT industry for over 20 years. He is currently CEO and President of PhoenixNAP Global IT Services.

“When dealing with PCI compliance…”

When it comes to protecting your cardholder data (CHD), there are a few best practices that can help you achieve PCI compliance.

  • If you want to keep your data safe, make sure that it is separated from the rest of the company’s. This way, if something happens with one cardholder environment (CHE), it will not affect all other environments.
  • Encrypt your data – All CHD should be encrypted, or tokenized. This includes encrypting the card number in storage to keep it secure.
  • You need to control access to your data. It’s important that the HR department doesn’t have any access at all and system administrators are able to do their job.
  • Monitor your data for security issues. A recent study found that attackers usually break in through the back door, so you need to be aware of everything going on with your system.

Ben Zilberman

Zilberman min

@radware

Ben Zilberman is a product marketing manager with Radware, working on the security team. His focus has been application security and threat intelligence, because he wants to work closely with other teams in order to raise awareness of high profile or impending attacks.

“There are several practices to ensure you meet the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS)…”

To start, you need to make sure that your security protocols are up-to-date. SSLTLS is not sufficient for PCI compliance anymore, so by June 30th of 2018 you must have upgraded to a more secure alternative. Another requirement for meeting PCI requirements is using strong access controls and creating very long passwords with different types of characters that avoid dictionary words. You also need remote communication protection against eavesdropping or other risks while keeping data safe on APIs as well as encrypted certifications and keys in order to remain compliant.

Steve Dickson

@Netwrix

Steve Dickson is an expert in information security and the CEO of Netwrix, a company that specializes in data security. He lives in Irvine.

“The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) aims to…”

This standard is for anyone who handles credit card information, including merchants, processors and issuers.

If you want to comply with PCI-DSS, here are three things you should do:

Conduct regular risk assessments. PCI-DSS recommends that you conduct a risk assessment in order to identify the likelihood and magnitude of harm from various threats, as well as determine whether additional controls should be put into place.

User behavior analytics can help you spot unusual user activity that might be indicative of insider misuse or hackers trying to gain access to IT infrastructure.

Data discovery and classification can help you find out where your sensitive data is in order to set appropriate levels of controls.

Tim Critchley

Critchley min

@Semafone

Tim is an experienced director of technology start-ups in both product and service focused sectors. He has been the CEO of Semafone since 2009, when he helped secure Series A funding from Octopus Investments.

“Complying with the complex PCI-DSS can be quite simple through a tactic called descoping…”

The PCI-DSS considers any person, system, or piece of technology that touches cardholder data as in scope. This means there are a lot more entities to be concerned about and it can get tricky.

If you have a contact center, and they accept customer payments over the phone, it’s possible to use DTMF masking so that sensitive data is out of reach from fraudsters.

Jennifer Glass

@creditcardsnj

Jennifer Glass is the CEO of Credit Cards, NJ (CCNJ) and has been recognized as an expert in the payment processing industry for more than 15 years.

“First is the obvious…”

Make sure that all people in the organization are following common sense practices and not leaving credit card data lying around. Second, if a payment processing system is connected to other systems on the same server(s), get it off those servers so malware can’t attack them.

Ellen Cunningham

Cunningham min

@CardFellow

Ellen Cunningham is a marketing manager for CardFellow, and she enjoys the challenge of explaining complex topics. She believes in their mission to empower business owners through education.

“PCI compliance is roughly split into 6 ‘categories’ with steps in each category…”

To make sure you’re compliant, work with your credit card processor or a security company.

The six main areas of compliance are securing the processing network, protecting cardholder data from malware and hackers, using strong access control measures to protect systems against hacking or other unauthorized access by a malicious outsider. Monitoring networks for any potential vulnerabilities is also important.

Setting up a secure network with firewalls, changing default passwords to more secure options and updating other security settings is essential.

To protect cardholder data, you should encrypt the data during transmission and store it off of your servers. Most processors offer a secure vault for digital storage to help with compliance.

To protect your system, you should install and regularly update antivirus software as well as patch any vulnerabilities.

Strong access control is when employees are only given the information they need to do their job, and not more. It also includes limiting physical access so that cardholder data isn’t stolen.

Tracking and testing networks includes monitoring who has access to cardholder data on your network, as well as finding out what they’re doing with that information. It also means checking for security flaws or vulnerabilities.

Creating an information security policy involves stating how your company will handle PCI-DSS and who is responsible for which components of it.

Jake Posey

@jacobposey

Prepaid Program Management LLC is a company that teaches FinTechs and entrepreneurs how to launch prepaid card programs. They also offer training for people who are interested in the industry.

“There are three areas I recommend companies focus on…”

The first way to avoid waiting until annual reviews is by doing mini audits. I’ve seen too many companies wait until the last minute and then find out they’re not PCI compliant.

Second, companies should make sure that their employees are restricted to the job they were hired for. This is especially important in Fintechs where rockstars can do many jobs.

Training is important, but companies need to invest in industry-specific training so that employees can understand the nuances of their work. Otherwise, they may not be able to fully grasp what was taught.

Evaldas Alexander

Alexander min

@rankpay

Evaldas Alexander is the CTO of RankPay, a company that helps small businesses get higher rankings.

“PCI-DSS compliance has several different Self Assessment Questionnaires (SAQs) that must be followed to be compliant…”

A shorter SAQ is better because it’s less likely that you have to deal with a customer service rep updating credit card information on behalf of the client. The wiki should be documented and audited so employees can’t break any policies.

Dmytro Lanovskyi

@intellias

Dmytro Lanovskyi, who is a CISSP on one of Intellias’ client projects.

“The best practices for meeting PCI-DSS compliance include…”

First, you need to assign someone who has experience with the compliance process and security. This person would be responsible for coordinating all of your company’s security activities.

You need to start building your architecture with PCI-DSS requirements in mind. You can’t just build something and then try to fit it into the framework afterwards.

You need to do an in-depth risk assessment before you can determine what security needs are.

Make sure you have control over how and when monitoring systems are used.

Make sure you have a security system in place and know what to do if anything goes wrong.

It’s important to set some goals before you start the hiring process.

The PCI-DSS certification process is expensive and time intensive, so be ready to put in the work.

The list of documentation you need to prepare includes:
-A description of your company and services
-An overview about the business, including what you do best

  • Antivirus Policy
  • Cardholder Data Policy
  • Firewall and Router Policy
  • Information Security Policy
  • Password Policy
  • Physical Security Policy
  • System Configuration Policy
  • This policy is to help maintain a safe and secure environment for all employees.
  • The company has a process for testing systems and processes.
  • To combat security breaches, companies should have a policy in place that defines the steps to take when an incident occurs.
  • We have a policy that states what is owned by the company and how it should be used. Anyone who breaks this rule will face disciplinary action.
  • Company policy on developing and designing new software for employees
  • The company has a policy on how we should manage our service providers.
  • Access Control Policy
  • A program is in place to make sure employees are aware of information security risks.
  • This policy statement covers the responsibilities of information security for employees.
  • This template is a contract that guides the relationship between an individual and their company.
  • Data Classification Policy
  • Data Protection Policy
  • Data Management Policy

PCI-DSS compliance is a daily requirement, even after the successful audit.

The CISSP is a certification that allows people to control all security activities.

Geoffrey Scott

ScottG min

@PayMotile

Geoffrey Scott, a consultant at PayMotile.com works to find the perfect payment processor for each individual company.

“PCI-DSS compliance is standard practice for payment processors…”

If you’re just starting out with card transactions, it might be difficult to comply. Here are a couple things that will help:
– You should always use strong passwords and change them often.
– Always keep your system updated so hackers can’t access any information.

2. Stop collecting customer information.

The more data you collect, the harder it is to protect. For instance, e-commerce businesses who collect and store user data have to fill out a robust form of compliance called PCI SAQ (self-assessment questionnaire). If they leave such collection up to third parties then their compliance will be easier with less questions on the SAQ.

In light of the GDPR, it’s a good idea to limit and closely monitor data collection. You want to reduce your company’s liability in case there is an error or lawsuit.

If you’re not sure what the best payment processor for your company is, then it’s important to communicate with them. You can’t start a business without knowing how payments work.

PCI-DSS compliance is governed by a standard set of rules, but your payment processor may have additional measures that you’ll need to follow. The last thing either party wants is for there to be any uncertainty about PCI-DSS compliance.

McCall Robison

@BestCompanyUSA

McCall Robison manages the Merchant Accounts Blog for BestCompany.com and she is a Content Specialist.

“What some people don’t realize about PCI-DSS compliance is that…”

You can’t just do it once and think you’re done. You have to keep doing this periodically so that your business is compliant with the PCI-DSS standards.

You need to make sure you are complying with PCI-DSS standards. If not, you must take the necessary steps and eliminate any vulnerabilities.

Gregory Morawietz

Morawietz min

@SinglePointOC

Gregory is the VP of Operations at Single Point of Contact. He has over twenty years experience in IT Security and consulting, along with hundreds of firms to show for it.

“The best practices for meeting PCI-DSS compliance are to…”

Always have the right tools to protect your cardholder data, including a vulnerability management program and an access control system. Keep on top of any potential problems by monitoring networks regularly, testing them often, and implementing security policies.

Carmine Mastropierro

@mastro_digital

Carmine Mastropierro is a self-made man who has created three successful businesses, and he’s written for GQ Magazine, Postmates, Marketo.

Article: A new study published in the Journal of Business Ethics found that people with multiple jobs were more likely to experience burnout.

“To meet PCI-DSS compliance…”

If you want to keep your customer data safe, first make sure that the website uses SSL certificates. This is an extra layer of security for customers and it’s required by major payment gateways. Secondly, once this has been taken care of, ensure that you have policies in place for keeping customer data secure (e.g., regular updates). Finally PCI compliance should be updated systems – databases need to be modernized with browsers and firewalls.

Chad Reid

Reid min

@JotForm

Chad Reid is the Director of Communications at JotForm, which provides form software that complies with PCI-DSS standards.

“I think one of the most important aspects of meeting PCI-DSS compliance as a service provider is…”

It’s important to have a top-notch, 3rd party security assessment. This will ensure you can show customers tangible proof of your compliance and go a long way in terms of their trust.

Mike Mood

@LamoodBigHats

Mike is the founder of Lamood Big Hats and WalletGear. He started making hats for people with large heads, as well as wallets.

“One of the best practices in meeting PCI-DSS compliance is to…”

You should never store credit card information on your servers. Use a third-party payment processor that is already PCI compliant like Paypal, Authorize.net, etc., to make sure the data is safe and avoid vulnerabilities.

You will need to make sure your e-commerce software is up-to-date with the latest patches. If you have a physical retail store, you will need to make sure that it’s not connected wirelessly and maintain a list of wireless access points. You should also consider having strong security measures in place for customer data.

Ilmie Sham Ku

Ku min

@BlueLinkERP

Ilmie Sham Ku is in charge of content marketing for Blue Link ERP.

“More and more retail businesses are beginning to…”

If your company deals with cardholder data, you need to be very careful when it comes to security. PCI-DSS standards are in place for this reason and ensure that the customer’s information is kept safe.

  • Employees may put credit card information in unencrypted fields just because it’s a habit. It could also be that they don’t have easy access to an encrypted database, so the only choice is to save the information on their computer.
  • Data migration: transferring your company’s credit card information from an unsecure database to a secure one can be time-consuming and tedious, but it is necessary.

To avoid this type of situation, companies must have proper process for accepting credit card information and train their employees on PCI Compliance. Companies should also use accounting software that includes separate databases to store sensitive data like credit cards.

Maintaining PCI-DSS compliance is an important task for any business. If you are not compliant, then your company will have to deal with fines and other consequences.


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