News

European PCI community confab addresses future of payments security

The conference focused on providing a greater understanding of PCI standards, solutions and services and their application in today's business environment.

October 13, 2014

The PCI Security Standards Council brought together payment industry leaders last week in Berlin to collaborate on securing the future of payments in Europe. The PCI SSC is an open global forum for the development of payment card security standards.

Last week's conference focused on helping the more than 400 attendees gain a greater understanding of PCI standards, solutions and services, and educating them about industry approaches to security and their application in today's business environment.

Merchants, acquirers, vendors and assessors shared case study presentations and lessons learned in security efforts, and discussed community-developed guidance on skimming; maintaining PCI DSS compliance; managing third party risk; security awareness training; and penetration testing.

Key discussion topics included:

• the challenge of card-not-present fraud and the importance of implementing multichannel protections;
• improving education and communication to the micromerchant community to address e-commerce security;
• using EMV in conjunction with point-to-point encryption and tokenization technology to devalue and protect data;
• shifting the dialogue from one of compliance to risk mitigation and security vigilance; and
• expanding European and global participation and collaboration on payment security.

"Criminals are much more focused and much more efficient today," PCI SSC International Director Jeremy King told attendees. "And PCI is more important than ever. As a community we must continue to work together to secure the future of payments."

The council also announced the opening of online voting for industry-led special interest group projects to address market needs. From Oct. 13-24, PCI Participating Organizations may vote for projects they would like to see the community to pursue in 2015.

More information on this process is available online.