By Ira Winkler
I was struck by the cluelessness expressed by “vendors” with regard to their attitudes about adhering to the PCI standards. The specific article is from ComputerWorld.com
Basically the vendor statements say that adhering to PCI requirements do not help them serve their customers. This is insulting to people’s intelligence. They also claim that it doesn’t help their bottom line. The PCI group is protecting their own bottom line, not the vendors’, because clearly the vendors have caused billions of dollars of problems for their customers, banks, and credit card processors.
Given the hundreds of millions of credit cards that have been compromised due to vendor negligence, it is about time that action was taken. The opportunity for self regulation has long passed, with consumers eventually footing the bill. Fundamentally vendors have reaped enormous benefits of taken credit cards. It is now time to accept the fact that there are costs associated with all benefits.
2 Responses to “Stop Complaining and Adhere to PCI”
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admin Says:
June 14th, 2007 at 8:12 pmUltimately the consumer always pays, the money has to come from somewhere to run a business. The question is how much does the consumer pay? It might save a company $1 per customer to have poor information security, but if it costs VISA or AMEX $10 to deal with a stolen credit card then the net cost is much higher (to say nothing of the lost time/etc. for a consumer dealing with this). Unfortunately it’s in the companies best interest (legal and fiduciary responsibility to shareholders/etc.) to minimize costs, but perhaps with lawsuits the cost of doing nothing (and getting hosed) will start to outweigh the cost of spending money on good information security programs and processes. One can only hope.
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Larry J. Hughes, Jr. Says:
June 22nd, 2007 at 11:29 amSounds like another book opportunity for Larry Winget, author of “Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: A Kick-Butt Approach to a Better Life”
“Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get Secure A Kick-Butt Approach to Better Security”
