Why PCI Compliance Matters When Conducting ECommerce
If you’re serious about selling online today, having a PCI-compliant SaaS ECommerce solution is a must in order to protect yourself and your valued customers against data breaches and other threats. Couple a PCI-compliant ECommerce shopping cart with high-availability cloud hosting, and you have a shopping cart solution that can handle the busiest shopping days without a glitch.
At MostHost we utilize PinnacleCart, because of its ease of use, social media integration tools, SEO friendliness built in, multiple shipping methods, easy management tools and most importantly a commitment to compliance and security. Basic Email filtering removes viruses, phishing attempts and other malicious Emails from ever being delivered to your Inbox and lessens the chances of infecting your computer or your computer network, for additional security measures. SSL is also included to assure that your sensitive customer data is safe.
SSL Encryption Is Needed To Protect Customer Information
All ECommerce applications need to use encryption because to do so is to risk customer payment information. If this happens, you could be facing stiff penalties or fines that could wipe out your entire business. Surprisingly, despite this huge issue, PinnacleCart is one of only 2% of shopping cart applications that is PCI-Compliant. This means that 98% of shopping carts currently being used on the internet are risking customer data loss - not exactly a “best practice” as it applies to doing ECommerce. Ecommerce Best practices dictate that vendors provide a safe shopping environment for their visitors and clients. Not doing so could damage your professional reputation at the very least and result in heavy fines and penalties at the very worst.
If you need proof of just how important being a PCI-compliant online vendor is, all you need to do is a a quick scan through the news. You’ll find that compliance problems can cost companies millions of dollars and breaches are on the rise. Don’t kid yourself and think for one second think you’re ‘too small’ to face these issues. Indeed, it’s the ‘little guy’ who can least afford to be out of compliance with today’s never ending regulations. Additional features, such as Email archiving and Email encryption provide further protection for you and your customer as it applies to FRCP and other federally mandated regulations that must adhered to.Remove Physical Access By Unauthorized Parties By Moving Services To The Cloud
The next step to securing your ECommerce store is to remove physical access of your data from unauthorized users. This is done by migrating your data to a cloud environment and eliminating sensitive data from being stored on hard drives or laptop computers that can fail, or be lost or stolen.
Removing this risk means that a disgruntled employee can’t cause a data breach that costs you money or your reputation. Information stored in the cloud offers an extra layer of protection because data isn’t stored locally on a physical hard drive, so if there’s a fire or other disaster that destroys your physical computers your valuable data is safe. If you must use physical media such as CD’s, DVD’s or USB thumb drives, you’ll be well served to encrypt sensitive data. Encryption assures that unauthorized people can’t access the data stored on the physical media won’t be able to view or share it with others. Failing to use encryption for certain documents and information could cause a privacy violation and cause headaches for your business and is recommended as another “best practice” for your Ecommerce solution.
If you’ve been dragging your feet about implementing a PCI compliant ECommerce solution, there’s never been a better time than right now to do it. Please Contact Us for an ECommerce solution that meets your needs - just ahead of the busy holiday shopping season.