Two Choices: Compliance or Bankruptcy

PCI compliance is critical for any business that handles credit card transactions. It’s the reason customers have trust and confidence instilled in them for their vendor. The PCI-compliant certification works as reassurance for customers, letting them know that their card data is being handled securely. The most important thing in a vendor-consumer relationship is trust, and PCI compliance inherently represents trust in that relationship.

One of, if not the most, important reasons PCI compliance exists is to avoid data breaches. A data breach can destroy a business, regardless of its industry or size. These data breaches can lead to insurmountable financial losses, potential legal liabilities, and crippling reputational damage. Imagine you go to shop at a local grocery store for your weekly dinner menu and a few days later you find out your credit card info was stolen by a hacker and a professional criminal now has access to your personal data. No matter what the relationship you’ve built with that business looks like, that trust is broken. PCI compliance essentially minimizes the risk of all of that happening with a few precautions, namely the robust security measures they implement.

The Target Data Breach

Let’s take a look at one of the biggest data breaches in recent history.

Target – yes, that Target – experienced a gigantic data breach during the busiest shopping time of the calendar year. Around the 2013 holiday season, a group of hackers got access into the Target network through one of their HVAC vendors who was not PCI compliant. Without some of the precautionary measures that PCI compliance requires, Target failed to segment its network properly. The hackers were able to easily navigate their way from HVAC systems to payment processing systems in the Target network, installing malware to the POS systems. This made customer credit and debit card data along with personal info available to a group of experienced criminals. In fact, over 70 million Target customers were impacted by this personal data breach - making it one of the biggest of its kind.

According to Business Insider, nearly 8 out of 10 US shoppers are Target customers and they operate almost 2,000 American stores. Imagine the level of trust Target had built over the years to get to this dominant share of the retail department store market. It’s become an and a staple of holiday shopping across the globe. All of that is completely irrelevant when you put 70 million people at risk of theft and significant financial loss.

The Way Forward

So, what happened to Target? On top of drastic costs related to lawsuits and investigations, their reputation with their customers is just now really getting back to normal. It took almost a decade for people to trust them again.

If there’s any silver lining in a situation like this, it’s that the incident likely inspired a lot of companies to emphasize PCI compliance and data security as part of their internal projects. While it’s great that companies started to take data protection seriously, it would be better if a company like Target used a financial operations provider that had PCI-compliance built-in, as this would give them time to work on more pressing projects. Imagine how less stressed company leaders would be if they didn’t have to worry about the consequences of a massive data breach.

Give Modernbanc your PCI Burden

Modernbanc is fully PCI compliant. That means our customers will never have to worry about where their loyal customer base is storing personal data, because we go through the diligent security measures so they don’t have to. It’s 2023 and credit cards aren’t going anywhere. In fact, it’s the future. Companies need a vendor that’s able to store and reuse card data. By using Modernbanc’s Secrets module, they can do that efficiently and most importantly, safely.

If you’re interested in how Modernbanc can eliminate any worry you have regarding PCI compliance and your customers’ data, reach out to us with [email protected].