Ignorance is not an excuse for failing a PCI DSS audit or, worse yet, being victimized by a data breach. With our PCI Compliance FAQ Guide, you'll be prepared to meet the responsibilities and guidelines for protecting sensitive information such as credit card numbers set by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Media accounts of the theft of personally identifiable information by hackers seem to keep coming like a two-mile-long train—there just seems to be no end in sight. Understanding the different types of PII and what your business needs to do to protect customer data is critical. 

That’s because cyberthieves stand to make enormous amounts of money selling personal data in bulk on the black market.

Understanding penetration testing versus vulnerability scanning and using them both properly will help your organization identify cybersecurity weaknesses and determine how likely they are to be exploited.

The average organization experienced more than 53,000 security incidents that compromised the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of information assets between November 2016 and October 2017, according to the 2018 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. Researchers confirmed 2,216 data breaches in which information was exposed to an unauthorized party during that same period.

In an age of ever-increasing cybercriminal activity, the healthcare industry continues to lag behind other industries in cybersecurity preparedness. This lack of attention to cybersecurity has hurt the industry in terms of data breaches in healthcare, massive fines, and loss of consumer confidence.

Let’s make a quick distinction: maintaining PCI DSS compliance isn’t the same as maintaining the security of payment card data. Though complying with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) will help you protect sensitive information, it may not prevent a data breach. A more comprehensive cybersecurity strategy is needed. 

Ensuring network security can be a very expensive game of cat and mouse for organizations. The truth is that securing your organization’s network infrastructure from hackers and other bad actors requires that you keep one step ahead.

Beyond the embarrassment of losing sensitive customer data, there’s a steep price tag associated with today’s breaches. The larger your organization, the more records are at risk and the higher the financial cost of recovering from a cyberattack.

There appears to be no end to this ransomware. As long as there are strong financial incentives to exploit the enterprise IT environment, new variants of these attack vectors will continue to pop up. It’s likely that an attack on your organization’s network will occur soon if it hasn’t already. Here are some IT security best practices you can implement to make your organization less susceptible to a ransomware attack.

A clean SOC 2 audit report assures customers that their data is secure with your organization. But failing to pass a SOC 2 audit, or receiving a qualified report, can scare customers away.

The difference between maintaining customers or losing them depends on whether you comply with the Service Organization Controls (SOC) set by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).

While the Internet of Things helps financial services firms run their businesses more efficiently and engage with their customers more effectively, IoT security is a concern. 

The proliferation of internet-connected devices has made it easier for customers to conduct their affairs and has given the companies that they do business with more insight into their activities.