How to Budget for PCI Compliance: A Small Business Owner’s Guide Let’s address the elephant in the room: you just received a PCI compliance questionnaire from your payment processor, and you’re wondering what this is going to cost you. Here’s the good news — for most small businesses, PCI compliance is simpler and more affordable … Read more

How to Verify Vendor PCI: A Clear Guide for Small Business Owners If you just received a PCI compliance questionnaire from your payment processor and your first reaction was “What is this?”, you’re in the right place. Here’s the bottom line: PCI compliance sounds scarier than it usually is for small businesses. Most merchants can … Read more

How to Document PCI Compliance Getting Started: Your PCI Compliance Roadmap That compliance questionnaire from your payment processor looks intimidating, but here’s the truth: how to document PCI compliance is much simpler than you think for most small businesses. If you’re reading this because you just received a confusing email about “maintaining PCI DSS compliance” … Read more

How to Choose an ASV Bottom Line Up Front If you just received a PCI compliance questionnaire from your payment processor and you’re wondering what an ASV is (and whether you need one), here’s what matters: an ASV is an Approved Scanning Vendor that runs quarterly security scans on your network. If you accept credit … Read more

What Is Sensitive Auth Data? Bottom Line Up Front If you just received a PCI compliance questionnaire from your payment processor and you’re feeling overwhelmed, here’s the good news: for most small businesses, PCI compliance is actually simpler than it sounds. Sensitive authentication data (SAD) is one of those scary-sounding terms that’s actually straightforward — … Read more

Bottom Line Up Front If you just received a PCI compliance questionnaire from your payment processor and you’re feeling overwhelmed, take a breath. For most small businesses, achieving PCI compliance is simpler than you think — often just a matter of answering a short questionnaire about how you accept payments and running a quarterly security … Read more

What Is a Compensating Control? Bottom Line Up Front If you’re reading this because your payment processor just asked about compensating controls in your PCI compliance questionnaire, here’s the good news: most small businesses don’t need compensating controls at all. These are basically workarounds for when you can’t meet a specific PCI requirement exactly as … Read more

What Is PAN Truncation? A Complete Guide for Small Business Owners Bottom Line Up Front If you just received a PCI compliance questionnaire from your payment processor and you’re wondering what PAN truncation means, here’s the simple answer: it’s a way to display only part of a credit card number (like XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-1234) to keep the … Read more

What Is Network Segmentation? Bottom Line Up Front If you just received a PCI compliance questionnaire from your payment processor and saw something about “network segmentation,” don’t panic. Here’s the truth: network segmentation is simply keeping your credit card processing systems separate from everything else on your network — like having a locked cash register … Read more