Making Compliance a Habit

Here we are in the season of resolutions, where many of us are trying to break bad habits – new year, new you.

However, one good habit we at PCI Pal believe should be maintained all year around is data security.  A resolution to maintain PCI compliance should be at the top of any organizations’ list.

Recent reports such as Verizon’s latest Payment Security Report, share some alarming figures. In 2019, just 27.9% of organizations assessed had maintained PCI DSS compliance during their interim compliance validation – meaning nearly three quarters of companies previously assessed as fully compliant were no longer! Couple these findings with Forrester’s October 2020 research which states that:

• nearly a third of firms have seen a more than 50 percent increase in call volume since COVID-19 began;
• on average, organizations have seen a 42 percent increase in year-over-year call volume since the pandemic began;
• 57 percent of firms have seen fraud attacks in the call centre increase since the start of COVID-19, and 53 percent can draw a direct line from the increase in fraud to their bottom lines;

So, what does a Data Protection Officer make of all this? In the latest episode of PCI Pal’s podcast ‘Secure Payments’ our own DPO, Innes French, offers his views on where it all goes wrong for organizations when maintaining compliance. And, why more than ever, having a robust data security strategy is so important.

The good news is, it’s not all doom and gloom. During the episode, Innes also shares advice on what can be done to address these issues; simpler changes than one might think and the sooner they are implemented, the sooner businesses can get back onto the right path to compliance.

Listen to the podcast here to motivate you and your team for better data security practices in 2021 and tick one resolution off your list – using your new Peloton, however, is all down to you.