Demystifying PCI compliancy

Operating an ecommerce website is full of intricacies and standards that appear to be there to trip the unwary, but few of these have caused quite so much consternation as the dreaded PCI compliancy issue.

Some banks demand that your site and your business is PCI compliant in order that they will continue to supply your payments and banking needs. Very few of them make it clear what PCI compliancy is and offer few explanations as to how it is achieved.

Simply put PCI Compliance is operating your business, and building your website in compliance with the standards set by the Payment Card Industry. This is achieved by scanning your website for security issues and by you filling in a self assessment questionnaire (SAQ) regarding business practices.

The banks that demand PCI compliance have departments and bank owned companies that can manage the operation to make your site compliant but there is always a catch. First and foremost they have to liaise with your Ecommerce Company to make any changes required to your site, which can make you liable to charges from both the bank’s team and your Ecommerce Company. Secondly the levels of support for the filling out of the self assessment questionnaire can vary. Despite the fact that the demand for compliancy comes from a parent organisation the work that these teams do is never free either.

Advansys provide an alternative route to PCI compliancy that is independent from your bank. Rather than scare you with rules and regulations we prefer to break things down and give you as much support as you need to quickly and efficiently achieve compliancy. Better yet it is a fixed fee, no matter how many security issues need to be plugged in your site or how the PCI standards change throughout the year.

So if you’ve had the scary bank letter and wish to talk to a more level headed team about PCI compliancy, give us a call to sort it out.