Tom Laird is the Founder and CEO of Expivia, a USA-based, 500+ seat omnichannel contact center located in Pennsylvania. He shares how call centers can safeguard critical customer data, giving customers peace of mind while reducing risk to your organization. Cyber security is important now more than ever with cyber-attacks becoming more and more common. […]
Tom Laird is the Founder and CEO of Expivia, a USA-based, 500+ seat omnichannel contact center located in Pennsylvania. He shares how call centers can safeguard critical customer data, giving customers peace of mind while reducing risk to your organization.
Cyber security is important now more than ever with cyber-attacks becoming more and more common. As a call center operator, it’s essential for you to protect sensitive cardholder data. Specifically, need to safeguard customer credit card payment data.
By ensuring your call center is PCI-DSS compliant, you’ll safeguard critical customer data, giving customers peace of mind while reducing risk to your organization.
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) is a security standard for businesses handling major credit cards that are aimed at reducing fraud. It sets a minimum level of security organizations must meet when handling, processing, and storing credit card information.
From building a firewall to maintaining information security for call agents, there are 12 requirements organizations need to meet to be compliant. And compliance is evaluated either on a quarterly or annual basis depending on the organization.
The first step you need to take is to conduct a risk assessment of your organization. You should also carry out the self-assessment questionnaire. These will help you see where your weak points are and how you can quickly achieve PCI compliance.
Afterward, you need to establish a policy for compliance that uses strong language like “must” and “will” to ensure follow-through.
When building out your policy for PCI compliance, you need to cover these areas:
Security risks are everywhere these days. From unhappy employees to careless agents to hackers, there are many ways your customer data can fall into the wrong hands. While being PCI compliant is a necessary step toward safeguarding this information, it’s not the only thing you can do to protect your sensitive data.
These are a few extra guidelines to follow in your organization to prevent data breaches:
While PCI compliance is a great step forward to ensuring your organization is securing customer data, misunderstanding its purpose and what it covers can put you at risk from all sides.
Here’s the truth behind several PCI compliance myths to help you out.
As a business that manages sensitive data, you have an obligation to protect customer information. But, there are many additional reasons to make sure your organization is PCI Compliant:
Becoming PCI compliant is not cheap. It can often come with a price tag that’s over 6-figures for the organization. Still, if you handle customer payment data, you need to be compliant. And there can be a lot of anxiety around trying to become compliant.
As a result, many organizations choose to outsource payment processing to third-party vendors who are already PCI-DSS compliant. This helps them stay secure while avoiding the steep start-up cost.
Just remember, even if you outsource your credit card data processing, you’re still responsible for protecting your customer data. Work with trusted vendors with a history of top-notch security processes and ask them to share (and update) their compliance certifications regularly.
Tom Laird is the Founder and CEO of Expivia, a USA-based, 500+ seat omnichannel contact center located in Pennsylvania. He is an author and the host of “The Advice from a Call Center Geek Podcast” where he shares over 25 years of experience in all facets of contact center operations.
For more articles from Shep Hyken and his guest contributors go to customerserviceblog.com.
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