PCI Compliance – Avoid Data Theft Incidents By Jill Ratkevic At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

In response to the growing number of data theft incidents, the PCI Data Security Standard, developed by MasterCard and VISA and also being enforced by American Express, has been put in place to protect cardholder information. Merchants and service providers must implement PCI compliance or face stiff fines.

But this is easier said than done. Whether you are selling books online or groceries at a local store, computer-based transactions result in a log data file that is a fingerprint of user and computer systems activity. Immense volumes of log data are traversing payment networks, necessitating more efficient ways of managing, storing and searching through log data. For example, a typical retailer generates hundreds of thousands of log messages per day amounting to many terabytes per year.

An online merchant can generate upwards of 500,000 log messages every day. One of America's largest retailers has more than 60 terabytes of log data under management at any given time.

These are just a few of the threats that plague payment networks:

•Information theft and leaks: Credit card data can be stolen from unsecured databases run by businesses or payment infrastructure providers. The FTC estimates 27 million Americans had their identities compromised between 2000 and 2005. To prevent information from this type of fraud, businesses must validate customer information and monitor its use.

•Brute force: Hackers leverage computing power to breach security and access payment data. Real-time monitoring solutions can help quickly identify attacks and block them before damage occurs.

•Insider breech: Insiders are often privy to vast amounts of customer payment data, requiring access control and monitoring mechanisms to be in place.

PCI compliance is all about protecting data. Log management and intelligence is a vital part of that. With LogLogic’s PCI Compliance suite, billions of log messages generated by retailers and merchants using credit cards can be made available for enforcing, auditing and automating the requirements and controls expected for compliance with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) data security standard.

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