Credit Card Security Mandates Put The Squeeze On SMB Online Merchants

Bankcard data compromises impacted an estimated 30 million card numbers in 2003, and are expected to double this year. In response to this growing problem, the card associations established security requirements for acquiring institutions and their merchant customers. Visa Cardholder Information Security Program (CISP) and MasterCard Site Data Protection Program (SDP) define strict standards of due care for securing cardholder data. In addition, the associations have made acquiring banks responsible for the data security throughout the transaction processing chain, and have implemented significant financial penalties for non-compliance that go into effect in September, 2004. Most SMB merchants are struggling with how to bring their online operations into compliance. The majority of shopping cart and gateway services are not currently compliant, and the implementation process is often complex. To address these issues, ClearCommerce recently introduced Hardened Commerce, which provides a trusted platform that includes shopping cart technology that has been certified to ensure proper use, storage, and transmission of card data and the fully CISP certified payment processing service, QuickStart. Additionally, Hardened Commerce bundles Verified by Visa and MasterCard SecureCode payer authentication and ClearCommerce Risk Management, an automated suite of fraud prevention technologies.