Small businesses may want to reevaluate their cybersecurity practices after a recent report showed that several small companies were not compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS), reported eSecurity Planet. The PCI-DSS standard aims to assist merchants and retailers that operate a secured system used for payments and transactions.
However, the new study from the enterprise security vendor Fortinet and performed by Lightspeed Research shows several small businesses do not follow the PCI-DSS. According to eSecurity Planet, 22 percent of small business retailers were not PCI-DSS compliant and 14 percent were unsure on their compliance status. Chris McKie, Fortinet’s director of corporate communications, told eSecurity Planet that he was surprised how many respondents admitted they were unaware of their the strength of their network security and their PCI-DSS status.
Card security a major issue with recent data breaches
McKie told eSecurity Planet that PCI-DSS compliance isn’t mandated by the state or federal government – it’s followed by credit card issuers like Visa or MasterCard.
“The organizations we surveyed were asked whether they transacted credit card data,” McKie told eSecurity Planet. “Those who do must be PCI-DSS compliant. So, our sample base of 100 SMBs should have all been required to be PCI-DSS compliant, as we would have rejected those retailers who would not be processing credit card data.”
The study found that 55 percent of the respondents were unaware of their state’s security breach notification requirements, reported eSecurity Planet. The survey also found that 40 percent of the respondents admitted they didn’t have any sort of cybersecurity policy in place.
Small businesses are often targeted
The lack of PCI-DSS compliance might endanger the cybersecurity of small businesses, especially after larger retailers Target and Niemen Marcus admitted to massive data breaches within the last month. Data security should be one of the most important concerns for a new or long-time small business. Data breaches can ruin business reputations and cause extreme financial losses. According to a Ponemon Institute survey, 55 percent of small businesses have encountered a data breach and 53 percent of those businesses had numerous breaches, eWeek.
Hackers know that small businesses are lacking PCI-DSS compliance and typically have weaker security measures in place compared to bigger companies. While many most companies believe they will not be attacked, unfortunately that is a false sense of security since most hackers depend on automated attacks, reported eSecurity.
Small businesses should invest in business insurance to protect their finances and customers from data breaches. Professional liability insurance can help small businesses recover from a data breach attack.
