Are you a modern and successful entrepreneur? Or perhaps you are a team of young, determined, educated and out-of-the-box thinkers, who aren’t afraid of creating a start-up and pursuing its success deliberately and step by step? Have you decided to create a cutting-edge company with new and striking products or services?
Are investors already beating down your door because your product will revolutionize the market? Are you convinced that you have created a very successful start-up?We sincerely wish you the best of luck! But we also want you to know that you will inevitably face the need to undergo PCI DSS certification. This is what we will discuss in this article.
During the start-up development phase, you will already have to consider how clients will buy your products or services. Modern clients want to pay via VISA, MasterCard, WebMoney, PayPal, or cryptocurrency.
The bank or payment gate to which you’re planning to connect your payment module will inform you that a start-up needs PCI DSS certification.In this article, we will not remind you what PCI DSS certification is and why it is necessary.
The thing to remember is that the requirements of a bank or payment gate are not a barrier but a necessity for your business. If you hold a PCI DSS certificate and communicate this to clients, you will earn their loyalty. After all, trust is very important in our relentlessly competitive world.
PCI DSS will allow you to accept client payments safely and you will feel secure knowing that your business is safe from hackers.
IT Specialist performs PCI DSS certification on a regular basis. Over the past year, we have issued certificates for dozens of start-ups from Ukraine and Europe.
How to start PCI DSS certification.
First, we invite clients to an initial consultation free of charge. We need to clarify the following aspects of your start-up:
● How many transactions does the start-up plan to perform in the first year of operation?
● Does your hosting or cloud provider have a confirmation of PCI DSS certification?
● Preparation of a diagram or chart of the start-up computer network.
What should start-up developers be prepared for in the process of PCI DSS certification?
The PCI DSS contains many requirements for the data security of your start-up.To get certified, you need to fulfill these requirements. All the standard requirements are available on the website www.pcisecuritystandards.org. Since the people involved in start-ups tend to be very busy, our experts will provide detailed information, make the necessary presentations, and answer all your questions.We would like to remind you that our company has extensive experience in start-up certification.
Based on our experience, we will provide you with some recommendations to be implemented:
● According to PCI DSS requirements, an external vulnerability scan or ASV-scan must be performed on a quarterly basis. This is included in our certification service. If no serious vulnerabilities are revealed in your start-up, IT Specialist will send you positive ASV-scan reports every three months.
● A start-up needs to undergo a penetration test or pentest. This is necessary to ensure that your start-up cannot be easily hacked.
● A system for collecting and analyzing all the events that occur in your IT infrastructure should become part of your start-up infrastructure. To do this, you need to provide a separate virtual server and select a software product to implement this function.
● A file integrity control system should be installed on all servers of the start-up IT infrastructure. There are several well-known solutions for this task; we recommend a free OSSEC program.
● The start-up network should have an attack detection and prevention system installed. There are commercial and free (open source) systems. The choice depends on the start-up size.
This is the key basic information you need to pay attention to when undergoing PCI DSS certification.
Every start-up is unique, and you will obviously have your own questions about PCI DSS certification.Our expert team is ready to provide advice and conduct PCI DSS certification for your start-up quickly, efficiently, and conveniently.