How To Keep Your Customer's Credit Card Information Safe

When your business begins processing the credit card payments of your customers, you will need to already have in place a system for ensuring that you keep your customer's credit card information safe. If your company places your customer's credit card information in jeopardy in any way, this will open you up to lawsuits and will also damage your business's reputation.

Maintain PCI Compliance

You must remain PCI compliant when accepting credit cards and debit cards. Otherwise, your business will not be following the law, and you will be placing your customers under unnecessary risk. Make sure that your credit and debit card processing software is compliant. To become PCI compliant, the software developer is required to pass a robust set of requirements. You will need a full PCI audit that will provide you with a scorecard of your business payments environment.

Fortunately, you do not have to install software to handle credit card processing yourself. Another option is to hire a service provider to install the hardware and software for you. There are some companies that even allow you to completely outsource all payment processing. Make sure to only use an approved service provider. The testing should be performed by a quality security assessor. 

Eliminate Unprofitable PoS

Evaluate whether you need to use each of the methods that your business uses to make a sale. You may want to have as many points-of-sale as possible, but each point-of-sale offers an opportunity for criminals to install malware that can be used to grab credit card information. Pay attention to whether you are earning enough sales from in-store kiosks or a mobile app. If you discover that there are some areas where you very infrequently make sales, it would make more sense to eliminate this point-of-sale as a way to eliminate one area where your customers may have his or her credit card information stolen.

General cyber-security methods must also be used to keep customer credit card information from being stolen. Make sure that your business has a strong firewall that will reduce the risk that your company is compromised by a security breach. Regularly test and monitor your network, and make sure that your privacy and security settings are kept up-to-date. Also, shutting down your network at the end of the day and making sure that it is not left unattended will make sure that your network is not vulnerable to hackers.