Every company should have IT security at the forefront of their minds at all times. All it takes is one data breach to potentially lose everything, or at the very least, lose a great deal of money. Achieving PCI compliance and passing an audit means you not only have your bases covered as far as security goes, but your vendors do as well. Getting everyone on the same page as far as PCI compliance measures may seem difficult. However, it’s not as hard as you’d think with the help of managed IT solutions.
Everyone Involved Must Be Compliant
Your vendors and their vendors must be PCI compliant in order for your company to be the same. It may seem unfair to potentially fail a PCI audit because of your vendors, but the reality is the best vendors will always be compliant anyway. The reason why the entire chain of vendors must be compliant is because sensitive customer information gets passed along the chain. Even if your company is 100% PCI compliant, customer information could get hacked if one of your vendors is noncompliant.
Keep All Patches Updated
If you’re getting a PCI audit, you need to make sure all of your security patches are current. Some companies let an IT security service handle all of the software and security updates for them, and some choose to have the updates fully automated. Either way you decide to go, having security patches current at all times will help your firm pass a PCI audit.
Automate When Possible
Even in-house staff assigned to keeping IT security up to date get busy and may delay updating any patches or software. That’s why it’s important to incorporate automatic updates and just use your staff to verify other aspects of PCI compliance. You can usually set the timeframe for automatic updates as frequently as you’d like, so you won’t have to worry about the last time your software has been updated.
Hire Third-Party Services
Another great way to ensure you pass a PCI audit is to hire managed IT solutions services to do the work for you. These companies exist to help businesses like yours remain PCI compliant, so there’s never a worry when an audit comes around.
Single Point of Contact has been providing managed IT solutions for companies since 1999. If you want to ensure your firm is always ready for a PCI audit, be sure to contact us to see how we can help.
