What to Expect When Working With PCI Compliance Specialists

Most people who venture into PCI compliance do so feeling overwhelmed and frustrated. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard seems all too confusing to navigate on one’s own without enforced potential fines and exclusions looming over their heads. However, working with compliance professionals shifts this experience entirely—but few know what to expect from the process.

What Your Compliance Professionals Want to Know

The first thing compliance professionals do is assess where you currently are as a business. This isn’t intended to blame you for any shortcomings, but rather, to ascertain your processing environment, your data flows, and your security status. They want to see how you collect, process, and transmit credit card information within your business from the first swiped touch of the card through to completing any given transaction.

This assessment takes anywhere from a few weeks to months, depending on how much they have to dive into. They’ll interview staff, review your network schematics, and examine your policy documentation. They may ask questions about things you don’t realize apply to PCI compliance, but anything that touches cardholder data is relevant.

What You’ll Learn About Your Compliance Requirements

Not every PCI assessment is created equal. Based on how many credit card transactions you process a year, that will determine your compliance level and what type of validation you need. Having pci compliance consulting services help you assess what’s applicable will help ensure that the level in which you’re participating doesn’t overwhelm you with technical jargon that you’ve no time or experience to navigate.

Most smaller businesses can complete a simplified assessment rather than undergo a full audit; however, there are varied assessments based upon how you process payments that can complicate a seemingly easy approach should one be assessed through the wrong documentation.

What to Expect To Change

The next step is determining what’s wrong and what could be better. Based upon the findings from the assessment and requirements determined above, a good PCI professional will effectively deem what’s relevant first and delineate a path for compliance thereafter. This is where other PCI professionals get it wrong; they haphazardly create a bulletin of what needs to be fixed first without applying an articulate approach and fail to explain how each and why each exists.

Understanding different ways to meet certain requirements is important as well, for sometimes there’s no singular fix that’s best, and only a PCI compliance professional can help you successfully navigate your requirements.

What Service Do They Provide

This is where the work begins for them; many PCI compliance specialists offer continued services at this point for implementation thereafter, whether it’s policy development, training efforts, consultation efforts for change of operations, or technology-based processes, they’ve a hand in helping you until all is said and done.

Documentation supports your PCI compliance effort. Once again, too many believe that creating the environment for necessary security requirements is enough—it’s not. Paperwork demonstrating you’ve accomplished everything that needs to be done is critical to a successful PCI compliance outcome, and PCI professionals will help create the paperwork to support requirements, such as network diagrams, policy documents and trust testing results.

The Validation Process

If you’ve worked with PCI compliance professionals up until this stage, getting validated should be the easiest aspect of it all—a good professional will assess what’s needed internally by completing the right assessment themselves, or they’ll bring on an auditor if you’ve determined that a third-party review is necessary.

A review will be done of your assessment answers, and supporting documentation will be gathered for submission, so everything can be vetted beforehand for an effective submission. Many are surprised at how detail oriented even small assessments are regarding where security is created and how cardholder data is used, but PCI professionals understand what assessors want to hear.

Subsequent Compliance

PCI compliance is not a one-and-done scenario; once you’re compliant, it must be maintained with frequent testing of security measures before annual review cycles, updates of required policies, and continual training of staff. PCI compliance professionals offer continuing services to keep compliant until annual validation cycles are needed—this relationship is important since PCI requirements do change over time as the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council evaluates how processes can be lessened or made tighter.

It’s important, therefore, that your PCI compliance professional remains engaged so that down the line, if business grows and processing needs evolve, adjustments can be made on time.

Financial Expectations

The cost associated with PCI compliance professionals may seem overwhelming upfront, but most come to find it’s worth it when all’s said and done. The services provided help eliminate mistakes that lead to fines, penalties or exclusion from processing altogether; they help facilitate changes that, although time intensive in development initially, prove sustainable later instead of band aids that lead to larger issues down the line—ultimately it’s peace of mind too, knowing that credit card processing security won’t be something you’ll have to worry about since someone else will ensure it’s done correctly.

How Long It All Takes

PCI compliance takes between 3-6 months—from assessment to validation—yet this varies depending on where you’re starting from and how extensive the changes need to be. Your PCI compliance professional will give you an idea upfront to prepare resources accordingly but expect little time away from business other than assessments that need staff involvement within technology sectors or management interviews/interactions—as long as your specialist comes in with as much work already suited for your needs, there shouldn’t be excess time in getting this done during business hours. Compliance is key but not if business operations suffer to accommodate it.

How Working With Professionals Makes It Worth It

Overall, working with PCI compliance professionals transforms what could seem like an insurmountable task into practical sub-goals for defined outcomes that any business can achieve by investing time and resources into changing their perspective on payment security. Most find it’s a shortcut that saves them time and money in the long run, so investing early makes all the difference!