The use of cashless forms of money payments begun in the twentieth century. The entry of information and technology has taken this kind of transactions to a higher notch. A person can buy a car from the comfort of their home, pay for it using a credit card and get the vehicle brought to where they are. As such, the protection of such data is vital. A company mandated to transact using the credit cards needs to build secure network infrastructure. The organization needs to install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect the transactional data. The firewall will also ensure the collection process is safe (Boston University, 2013).
The changing of vendor-supplied default passwords is not advisable. The organization should come up with a process of changing the passwords frequently to ensure that the information is secure. The data collected on the credit card should also be encrypted when transmitting it over public networks. It will make sure that even if the data falls into the wrong hands, nobody will be able to understand it until they decrypt it. The use of reliable and updated antivirus is advisable (SUNY Oneonta, 2017).
Once the information is in the system, there is need to compartmentalize the information. The flow of information should be on a need-to-know basis. An organization tasked with the handling of such information should also vet their employees and make sure they are trustworthy individuals. The issuance of unique identifications would make it easy to track what the employees are doing (Boston University, 2013). Hard copies of the information should be available. The monitoring of all access to network resources and cardholder data would also go a long way in ensuring the security of such information. Having regular systems test would also make sure that any weakness is identified and corrected (Control Scan, 2017).
In a nutshell, organizations handling such information need to take it upon themselves to ensure that such data is safe. They also need to educate their clients on how to secure their cards.
References
Boston University, (2013) PCI Data Security Standards. Retrieved on 17 January 2017 from https://www.bu.edu/cfo/comptroller/departments/cashier/resources/pci-data-security-standards/
ControlScan, (2017) PCI Compliance Guide. Retrieved on 17 January 2017 from https://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pci-faqs-2/
SUNY Oneonta, (2017) Credit Card Processing and Handling Security Policy. Retrieved on 17 January 2017 from http://suny.oneonta.edu/credit-card-processing-and-handling-security-policy
