Updated 4/04/2024

In today's increasingly digitized world, the threat of fraud and cybersecurity breaches looms larger than ever before. With the rapid evolution of technology comes new opportunities for malicious actors to exploit vulnerabilities in our digital infrastructure. From sophisticated phishing schemes to data breaches on a massive scale, the landscape of cybercrime is constantly evolving, presenting formidable challenges for businesses, government agencies, and individuals alike. How do you ensure your data and your customers information is safe? Secure payment processing is paramount, but not all payment processors are created equal.

Look for these key features when making your choice:

PCI Compliance– Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards are industry-wide security parameters put in place to ensure all company using payment processing maintain the necessary levels of security. For example, encryption is a PCI requirement.

Why it matters:

• Selecting a payment processor that is PCI compliant ensures you, by utilizing their services, are also PCI compliant.
• PCI compliant processors have a level of expertise that is hard to find outside the industry.
• Expert payment processors will ensure your system meets all PCI requirements with features such as firewalls, intrusion detection, content filtering, file integrity monitoring, security event and information management, virtual private networks, malware controls, awareness training, secure email and secure large file transfer processes.

Tokenization –Tokenization occurs when sensitive information is substituted with meaningless characters, or a token. This token maps back to the sensitive information through a tokenization system, and the data cannot be traced without the system.

Why it matters:

• Client data should never be saved on your servers. With tokenization, it never does.
• Payment processors using tokenization never store client information, such as credit card numbers, reducing the risk of fraud.

Multi-pronged security approach –Just like medieval castles had moats as well as inner and outer walls, the best modern security system has more than one safety feature enabled.

Why it matters:

• In the event one security measure is compromised, there are numerous others to avoid a breach.
• In addition to PCI compliance and Tokenization, look for a payment processor who invests in other security protocols including session authentication, session encryption, data encryption, and authentication, followed by the secure deletion of data.

While cybercriminal attacks are inevitable, data breaches don’t have to be. By choosing the right payment processor, you protect yourself and your clients, and buck the disturbing trend in cybersecurity.

Certified Payments is your best choice for secure payment processing. Certified Payments utilizes all the best practices outlined above. For more information, click here.