PCI Compliance Checklist: Are You Covered?

In the age of digital commerce and electronic payment methods, retailers and other businesses routinely handle and store sensitive customer data. As such, these businesses are responsible for keeping that information secure by protecting customers and themselves from data breaches.

Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance is a set of security standards established by the PCI Security Standards Council to protect customers’ payment information during and after the financial transaction. PCI compliance is a requirement of the credit card companies.

Understanding PCI Compliance

The security standard, known as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), comprises 12 key requirements, 78 base requirements, and more than 400 test procedures for any business that accepts, processes, or stores credit card information. Please note, as of the writing of this article, PCI-DSS 4.0 is the latest release. There are new requirements in 4.0 that become effective on March 31, 2025, so if you are certified on version 3.2.1, you will probably want to starting planning for that transition soon.

For PCI certification, merchants must complete a self-assessment questionnaire about how the business accepts cards. Depending on the complexity of your business, the questionnaire could include up to 350 requirements to address. Second, merchants must undergo external scans of the business or e-commerce website to identify and address any vulnerabilities.

The risk of non-compliance

Without implementing and adhering to established safeguards, your business is much more vulnerable to a data breach. Factoring in the time and expense of recovering from a leak, damage to customer relationships and brand reputation, and penalties, it’s not surprising that many merchants don’t fully recover after an attack.

Even if you don’t suffer a data breach, you are subject to non-compliance fees. These charges can add up quickly but are avoidable by becoming compliant. Your payment processor should be helping you become PCI compliant rather than simply collecting your non-compliance fee every month.

Despite the high stakes involved, businesses often fail to fully maintain PCI standards. For instance, research shows that within the last four years, a whopping 88% of retailers have stored encrypted data on their networks.

The Road to PCI Compliance Starts by Reducing Your Scope

PCI compliance is not a one-time process. Your business must be certified on an annual basis. This can be quite time consuming and burdensome if you don’t take measures to reduce your scope of exposure.

Here are 5 key ways you can reduce your PCI scope:

1. Do not store your customers’ primary account numbers on your network. By not storing credit card numbers, you will be eligible for a shorter self-assessment questionnaire.
2. Make sure you are using PCI certified encrypted payment terminals at point of sale.
3. Use tokenization rather than credit card numbers to support repeat and recurring sales.
4. Restrict access to customer account information to only “need-to-know” employees.
5. Use firewalls to segment your network and limit access to payment card data.

As data threats escalate, consider exploring additional measures to safeguard your business and your customers’ information. However, becoming PCI compliant is the foundation for an effective data security strategy.