Introduction to PCI DSS: What You Need to Know
by KirkpatrickPrice / April 18th, 2017
This exclusive video series, PCI Demystified, was developed to assist your organization in understanding what the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is, who it applies to, what the specific requirements are, and what your organizations needs to know and do to become compliant.
Why was PCI DSS developed?
The PCI Security Standards Council is a third-party organization that was developed for the sole purpose of managing the security of cardholder data. Prior to the PCI Security Standards Council, each payment card brand managed their own security standards.
Eventually, the payment card brands realized that it was counterproductive to have five different sets of standards that their clients had to audit against, thus, the PCI Security Standards Council and the PCI Data Security Standards were created. The PCI DSS was developed to encourage and enhance cardholder data security and facilitate the broad adoption of consistent data security measures globally. The founding payment brands for the PCI Security Standards Council include Visa, Inc., MasterCard, Discover Financial, American Express, or JCB International.
Who are the participants in the PCI environment?
If you store, process, or transmit cardholder data, interact with payment card data in any way, or have the ability to impact someone else’s cardholder information or the security of that information, you are subject to comply with the PCI DSS. The PCI Security Standards Council and payment card brands are major participants in the PCI environment and are responsible for tracking and enforcing PCI DSS compliance, penalties, fees, compliance deadlines, and the monitoring and facilitating of investigations. The other entities that are impacted by the PCI DSS compliance lifecycle are acquiring banks, issuing banks, merchants, service providers, and sub-service providers.
An acquiring bank is a bank or financial institution that processes card payments on behalf of a merchant. Acquirers are subject to payment brand rules and procedures regarding ensuring merchant compliance on behalf of the PCI Security Standards Council.
Issuing banks are the financial institutions that issue the payment cards on behalf of the payment card brands and who act as the middle man between the cardholder and the payment brand network.
Merchants accept the credit cards for payment and may store, process, or transmit cardholder data.
A service provider is any entity that stores, processes, or transmits cardholder data on behalf of a third-party (merchant), or otherwise have the ability to impact cardholder data security.
A sub-service provider is any entity that is acting on behalf of a merchant or service provider who has active access to their cardholder data environment.
Introduction to PCI DSS
Hi, my name is Jeff Wilder and I am the Director of PCI Services here at KirkpatrickPrice. We wanted to develop a series of videos to talk about what the PCI DSS Security Standards are, who they apply to, and then later on, talk about the specific requirements about what you actually need to do to in order to become compliant.
We want to start off the series by talking a little bit about the players within the industry. The PCI Security Standards Council is a third-party independent organization that was established about 10 years ago for the sole purpose of managing the standards themselves. Prior to the PCI Security Standards Council, each card brand managed their own standards. They realized that it wasn’t in their best interest to have five different standards and have clients having to audit against so many different standards. So, they established the Council as the sole means of managing a set of security standards that need to be applied if you interact with a Visa, MasterCard, American Express, or JCB. So in this lifecycle, we have the PCI Security Standards Council, we have the card brands themselves, and we also have what we call acquiring banks. Now these acquiring banks – if you are a merchant having merchant relationship with a bank, if you accept a credit card for payment, you have a relationship with an acquiring bank. These acquiring banks are the entities that, really, are responsible for your compliance. They are responsible for you on behalf of the Council to ensure that you are compliant on a day-to-day basis. Next in the ecosystem, we have what we call issuing banks. Now, the issuing banks have a relationship with the individuals that have credit cards. They’re the ones that actually issue the cards. Of course we have the merchants – these are the organizations that accept the credit cards for payment. Then we have service providers. Now, service providers are any entity that would store, process, or transmit cardholder data on behalf of a third-party, or otherwise have the ability to impact the security of it. If you interact with payment card data in any way, if you store, process, or transmit it, or if you have the ability to impact someone else’s cardholder information or the security of that information, you are subject to the PCI DSS standards.
In this series of videos, we’re going to be going over the requirements and talking about, not so much just what does the PCI DSS Security Standards say and the individual requirements, but what it really means. How is that going to apply into your environment? What I’m going to try to do is provide you with some guidance based off my 10 years of experience in the industry as former Council member helping to develop these standards and training for the last 2.5-3 years, prior to becoming the Director here at KirkpatrickPrice. I’m going to bring to the table all of that knowledge and information for you to use at your discretion. So, hope you enjoy the videos. Thank you.
