Another day, another data breach in the news. It seems that the more technology-dependent we become, the more susceptible we are to having our personal or business information compromised.
The impacts of data breaches can be viewed from several perspectives:
- Your personal data was breached – your credit card was hacked
- Your suppliers’ business was breached – divulging your business payment card data
- Your business data was breached, exposing your customers’ private information
If you’ve had the unfortunate experience of being hacked, you’re all too familiar with the angst, frustration and time required to rectify the long-term effects. While a breach of your personal information is distressing and frustrating, when it’s your business that breached the data, the impacts on your customer relationships can be devastating.
As a business handling the sensitive information of your customers, it’s critical to do everything in your power to protect your customer data.
Rules and regs associated with handling credit cards
First, some background information.
To protect buyers, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) established standards and requirements for all businesses handling payment card data. All businesses that store, process or transmit credit card data electronically are required to follow the PCI compliance guidelines.
The PCI Standards Council, an organization founded by the credit card companies, enforces PCI compliance. It’s onerous but vital, and compliance should be prioritized with the utmost attention.
You can’t steal what you don’t see: Tokenization
One way to protect sensitive information and to minimize the impact of PCI compliance requirements is to keep distance between you and customer payment card data. If you never touch the sensitive data, the scope of your overall PCI requirements is reduced.
Tokenization enables your business to process payments without access to the actual credit card information. This benefits your customers because tokenization reduces the risk of exposing their credit card data. And it benefits your business because it reduces the scope of your PCI compliance requirements.
Within the DS90 iSeries Order Management application, customer credit cards payments are processed using a secure tokenized payment gateway to maximize security. The DS90 iSeries application links to the payment processor gateway, which captures the credit card data. The payment gateway returns a “token” back to the DS90 iSeries application. This token (a random string of letters and numbers), rather than the credit card data, is stored with the transaction.
Because the credit card data is never handled or stored within the DS90 iSeries Software, businesses using the software have a significantly reduced scope for PCI compliance. More significantly, hacker attempts to steal personal data prove fruitless.
More tokenization efficiencies in DS90 iSeries
Processing recurring payments for repeat transactions by a customer is especially nimble within the DS90 iSeries Software. One or more tokens (each associated with a credit card) can be stored on an account to process charges for future transactions, without risk of exposing credit card data.
What’s all that mean to you? As a small distributor or independent business, it means credit card transaction processing is convenient, simple and secure.
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