PCI Compliance for Software Providers Made Easy

When you work in sales, keeping your customer’s sensitive information safe is a must. Many people, machines and systems cannot be trusted to properly secure sensitive data like credit card numbers and other confidential information. This is why the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, or PCI DSS requirements, have been established and strictly enforced. Fortunately, there are some reliable methods for complying with the PCI DSS and containing the scope of these regulations. The methods for easing PCI compliance for software providers include tokenization and point-to-point encryption.

P2PE: Point-to-Point Encryption

Point-to-point encryption, or P2PE, is a technology that securely protects personal information of cardholders during a transaction. The encryption of cardholder data makes it much harder for hackers to retrieve the confidential information. With P2PE, the software provider and merchant are taken out of the equation as the credit card is accepted, thus greatly reducing the risk involved. In fact, there are many benefits to using point-to-point encryption:

• Lessens risk
• Protects cardholder data at the point of entry all the way through to settlement
• Eases PCI Compliance requirements

Tokenization

Another useful method in reducing PCI compliance scope is tokenization. With tokenization stored cardholder data is replaced with symbols, or tokens.  This way, in the event of a breach, the tokens are essentially useless. The benefits of using tokenization are:

• Developers can easily add-on tokenization to their payment gateway integrations.
• Reduces PCI compliance requirements since scored cardholder data is not in the software application.
• Merchants can easily create tokens for card-on-file or scheduled payments.

Along with reducing liability, tokenization meets certain PCI requirements, such as those dictating that stored sensitive personal data (i.e. credit card information) is protected. With tokenization, the merchant is no longer storing data, nor is the software application, lessening the scope of PCI compliance.

When it comes developing PCI compliant solutions, trust Paragon Payment Solutions to help you mitigate scope.