Those three little letters, P C I. They seem to set off all sorts of alarm bells as soon as a retailer starts thinking about them. It’s hard, yes, but making your store compliant is definitely achievable.

Three suggestions we would give to anyone contemplating their first on-site assessment or filling out a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (and if you don’t know what that is, then one of these suggestions is really for you) are:

• Familiarize yourself with the PCI Security Standards
• Maintain the right attitude
• Get your vendors and service providers involved early

Familiarize yourself- Stop by www.pcisecuritystandards.org and read the PCI-DSS. Read the supporting documents. Read some news articles. Having this basic level of knowledge will make you much more comfortable going through an assessment.

Maintain the right attitude- It’s important not to get overwhelmed. PCI seems like hard work because it is. If you go into it recognizing that it will most likely cost you some money and time; you will be less likely to balk when cost and time pop up as issues.

Get your vendors and service providers involved early - Many of your vendors and service providers have PCI expertise. Also, PCI is a team effort, but as the merchant you are the team leader. If you get the other members of the team engaged early, you will find it much smoother down the line.

Tags: PCI, PCI Compliant, PCI Security Standards

This entry was posted by James Hervey, Senior Manager, Product Marketing on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 10:38 am and is filed under Retail. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.