Overview
The breach or theft of cardholder data affects the entire payment card ecosystem. Customers suddenly lose trust in merchants or financial institutions; their credit can be negatively affected — there is enormous personal fallout. Merchants and financial institutions lose credibility (and in turn, business), they are also subject to numerous financial liabilities.
As result many organizations (or card brands such as VISA and American Express) require business partners to obtain a PCI DSS validation.
Similarly, your organization is likely performing similar reviews for your vendors – such as data centers and managed service providers – to ensure you can rely on business partners to serve customers.
PCI Validation is the market’s response to security and privacy due diligence as related to payment cards.
Key Benefits of PCI DSS Validation
For many organizations PCI Validation has become the de-facto means of communicating their security and privacy posture with business partners. As result, obtaining a PCI DSS validation is mission critical:
- As a revenue generator, relevant to gaining trust with prospective clients during due diligence;
- As a means of cybersecurity risk management, relevant to gaining assurance controls are operating effectively; and
- As a means for management to gain an independent view into ongoing operations and to proactively resolve issues when they are identified.