Managed services provider, Claranet, today announced it has achieved Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) accreditation across its range of UK data centres.
In recent years there has been a rapid growth in online card transactions, with more people using the internet to make payments. In order to safeguard the security of cardholder details, Mastercard and Visa developed the PCI DSS accreditation; a compulsory 12-step security standard required for all organisations that store, transmit or process card data, to ensure that all transactional information is protected.
Online retailers who store credit card details, customer information and transactional data in Claranet’s data centres are now compliant with sections 9 and 12 of the security standard and do not need PCI DSS accreditation for these elements of the standard. This presents huge benefits to Claranet’s customers, who no longer have to worry about these sections, which in most cases involve things that are outside of their direct control. It also offers considerable cost and time savings to any business going through the PCI DSS compliance process.
Ann Summers' Head of IT Service Delivery, Mel Wilcox, commented
With the growth of our e-commerce business and with more people using the internet to make payments, meeting PCI DSS requirements is essential to us and something that we take very seriously. As our current web infrastructure is hosted with Claranet, their compliance is an absolute necessity. If our e-commerce strategy leads us to host more Ann Summers’ websites in any of Claranet’s data centres, it is reassuring to know that Claranet has already taken care of their PCI DSS compliance status and that this would be something we would not have to cover off ourselves.
Michel Robert, managing director of Claranet, said
We took the decision to become PCI DSS compliant after experiencing significant growth in managed services for online retailers. After realising the long process retailers go through to meet compliancy requirements, we felt that we could simplify things for them by ensuring we were compliant across the whole range of our UK data centres. We look forward to working with our retail customers to continue enhancing our managed services and provide the highest quality solutions with the most hassle-free implementation.
Click to find out more information about PCI DSS accreditation
For more information please contact:
Katie Boulton, Amy Bunn and Tony Mangan
3 Monkeys Communications
Tel: 020 7009 3100
claranet@3-monkeys.co.uk