PCI compliance is important for any business as the consequences for failing to do so result in heavy fines. Apart from being careful about credit card information, ensuring technological security and organizing your PCI compliance plan around the specific requirements for the credit cards accepted by your company, PCI compliance also involves your staff in general. PCI compliance training is actually required by law for your staff. This means that as part of your compliance plan, you must include a section of PCI compliance training.
By meeting this requirement, you’ll not only make sure you’re standing on stable ground legally, but you’ll improve security for your customers. Here are some reasons you should consider going the extra mile to truly put into practice excellent PCI compliance training for your staff:
Avoid risks By training your staff, they’ll know what to look for when handling credit cards and how to take care of this information. Security incidents can often be caused by employees rather than technological failures. Staff must know what information is not to be disclosed and what are examples of unusual activity that should be reported. By increasing the staff’s knowledge, fewer mistakes will occur, leading to fewer security risks.
Organization PCI compliance training can be a great opportunity to organize your staff and their roles. If things aren’t clear yet, take the chance to organize your staff so that each person knows his role in maintaining security in the business. Each person’s role will have specific best practices and procedures to follow. For example, those who process payment cards, those who use or build databases with cardholder data or those who design and build networks that cardholder data traverses. Each role would require additional training. Each should be aware of the other’s role and they should work together to hold each other accountable to meeting the standards.
Save time By getting things organized and going through training, the staff will be more efficient in their compliance with PCI standards. They’ll know how and why to do it – making things not only safer but also more effective.
Having a well-informed staff regarding PCI compliance is important legally. PCI compliance is a very important part of running a successful business, and so it is absolutely necessary to provide PCI compliance training for staff. However, it is worth your while as a business-owner to go the extra mile and truly investigate the training to be done rather than simply fill the requirement. A high-quality PCI compliance training will improve your company’s efficiency, security and organization. A staff that is aware, knows the do’s and don’ts of PCI and can spot suspicious incidents provides added value to your business and customers. Everyone would love their company’s reputation to be clean and free of any customer’s skepticism of its safety. Thus, true investment in PCI compliance training must be done periodically so that the staff is informed and skilled in this important area.
