Beyond Compliance: Understanding Secure Payment Processes

Secure Payment Processes: The Cornerstone to Protecting Valuable Business and Customer Data

As the number of transactions, customers and payment methods used online and in-store increases, merchants need to protect their businesses and their customers with secure payment processing. Cybercriminals are constantly looking for vulnerabilities that provide them with an opportunity to steal valuable personal and financial data. Every step of the payment process needs to ensure that the customer and the business are protected, without negatively impacting the checkout experience.

Security and Compliance

Compliance initiatives support a wider security effort, but identifying and addressing any weaknesses in the payment process to protect the business goes beyond regulatory requirements. Although compliance is an important part of secure payment processing, it focuses on following a set of rules. Security is a comprehensive and proactive approach to keep ahead of evolving threats.

Why Security Matters

The data used in a payment is of immense value to cybercriminals, making it a prime target for theft. Successfully stealing 10 credit cards per website, can earn cybercriminals up to $2.2 million according to The Symantec 2019 Internet Security Threat Report.¹ A security breach that involves data theft is disruptive, costly and in some cases catastrophic for a business. The average cost of a data breach is USD 3.86 million.²

A secure payment solution is essential to protect a business from a breach and to provide assurance to customers that their personal information is safe. As merchants look to grow their business in new markets and by offering a wider range of payment options, they need to prioritize the security of the business and their customers to avoid any potential financial and reputational damage.

Secure Payment Processing – What Needs to be Considered?

Securing payments requires a wide range of measures to protect customer and financial data and prevent it from being compromised. It is important that efforts include ongoing development to allow the business to quickly react and respond to changes in the emerging threat landscape.

• Encryption – Securing transactions with SSL protocols protects sensitive data during the transaction. SSL and TLS – (Transport Layer Security) TLS and (Secure Sockets Layer) encrypt data and authenticate a connection when moving data on the Internet. Sensitive information is encrypted and only accessible by the intended recipient.
• Authentication – Protocols such as 3D Secure 2.0 prevent unauthorized use of cards and protect merchants and issuers from exposure to fraud. Requesting the cardholder to authorize the transaction adds extra protection and assures cardholders that their card is not being misused while providing an optimal user experience.
• Fraud Prevention – Incorporating fraud decisioning models, using numerous data sources and rules to identify high-risk transactions – anti-money laundering (AML), counter-terrorism financing (CTF), sanctions screening, know your customer (KYC) and know your business (KYB) identity verification – enables businesses to identify and check potential individual (KYC) and business (KYB) clients and prevent criminal entities engaging in money laundering and terrorist financing.
• Compliance – Any business that processes and stores payment card data is required to protect cardholder data from fraud. PCI compliance examines how data is handled across the organization to identify potential vulnerabilities that could put cardholder data at risk and help businesses secure credit card processing.

What’s the Best Approach for Secure Payment Processing?

A secure payment solution needs to respond to the evolving needs of the business and integrate seamlessly to optimize the user experience.  As more customers are acquired in new markets using a variety of payment methods, the solution needs to scale – smoothly and securely.

Sources:

1. https://docs.broadcom.com/doc/istr-24-executive-summary-en
2. https://www.ibm.com/security/data-breach