Fergie's Tech Blog

PCI Survey Finds Some Merchants Don't Use AV Software

Jeremy Kirk writes on PC World:

Consumers face a greater risk of losing control of their data when doing business with smaller retailers, as many haven't made investments to comply with the Payment Card Industry's Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), according to a new survey.

The survey, which covered 560 U.S. and multinational organizations, asked respondents a variety of questions about their investments and deployment of technology to comply with PCI DSS, which was introduced in 2005. It's an industry standard created by major credit card companies that's designed to protect customer payment data.

The survey found that 55 percent of organizations only secured credit card information but not other data such as Social Security and driver's license numbers or bank account details. Also, only 28 percent of smaller companies between 501 to 1,000 employees comply with PCI DSS. That compares with more than 70 percent of large merchants with 75,000 or more employees that claimed they're compliant.

"If you go the larger organizations to do business, you are more likely to be secure today," said Amichai Shulman, CTO for Imperva, which makes security software for businesses to comply with PCI DSS. Imperva commissioned the survey from Ponemon Institute, a company that conducts research into privacy and information security policy.

The prime reason that companies don't comply with PCI DSS is cost, Shulman said. "They don't go to the effort to be compliant because it's all or nothing, so they currently do nothing," Shulman said.

posted by Fergie @ 9/23/2009 05:12:00 PM