With the involvement of technology in our everyday tasks, banking sector has greatly been influenced by the innovation of technology. They have implemented various techniques and technological factors and have introduced various elements that enable a more feasible financial situation for their customers. This may include the mobile apps being developed now-a-days for the purpose of online transactions, transfer of money and withdrawal. Among these factors, one of the greatest elements that completely flipped the paradigm of banking is online cash withdrawal. Cash withdrawal provides the customers with a on the spot solution regarding financial restraints. When we talk about online cash withdrawal, we are generally referring to the payment card industry. The payment card industry has greatly changed the surface of payments by introducing various types of credit cards to be used. However, one major element to keep in mind is the Data Security Standard (DSS) to be taken in regard while delivering a proper payment card industry application. On a brief note, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is an information security standard for various organizations that deal with branded credit cards to be accessed and utilized in their particular organization and handling branded cards from the major card schemes allocated by these organizations.

The PCI standards, as a whole, are determined by the card brands, however, its administration is the sole responsibility of Security Standards Council of Payment Card Industry. The major purpose behind developing a certain standard was to increase the control over the cardholder data in order to prevent credit card fraud. When credit cards were introduced, there were various scams that involved money being transferred in the wrong bank accounts and duplicate cards being used to take money from a random user’s account. This posed a major threat to the viability and authenticity of credit card companies due to the poor performance and security measures being taken in order to avoid such problematic situations from being developed. For this purpose, validation of compliance is usually performed annually at the end of the ear, or every 3 months. This may be done by an external Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) or a person within the firm, which may be termed as Internal Security Assessor (ISA) working within the organization. The job of these two individuals usually revolves around creating a report of compliance for organizations in order to corporate with handling a large sum of money, large volumes of transactions. Hence, in order to verify the authenticity of these organization, it is important to consider the security measures being taken by the organizations who have provided the cards. The security may be checked by using Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) for companies handling smaller volumes of financial data being transacted.

In order to implement a safe PCI protocol to be set in place, it is customary to implement the following twelve requirements, which should be kept in mind:

1. Installation and maintenance of a firewall configuration in order to protect the data of the users using that specific card. The main purpose of firewall is to scan the network traffic, block such networks that may be potentially threatening or harmful for the cardholder data and disabling them from accessing the confidential cardholder data.
2. The important parameter to be considered, which is changing the vendor-supplied passwords which are set by default, and other security measures which are set by default. These passwords may easily be perceived by an external threat, or by using public information and can be further utilized by malicious threats which may use this information for their personal gains and get unauthorized access to the systems containing this information.
3. Protecting the cardholder data is important by using various encryption methods. Further elements, such as hashing, masking and truncation can also be used to protect user data.
4. Encrypting cardholder data over public networks by using strong encryption methods. This can be utilized by authorizing certain types of keys which may be only accessible by the user.
5. Since viruses and malwares are upgrading day by day, it is important to protect all systems from such threats. Malware entrance is an alarming situation for card vendors to deal with, since it can highly damage the cardholder data and also provide illegal access to it. The major entrance route for malware is considered to be internet, employee email, mobile or storage devices. Using various antimalware software to protect cardholder data is extremely important.
6. Maintenance and development of a secure system and delivering a proper and maintained application of such device. If a certain card provider does not enable proper security measures, it may enable external threats to access certain sensitive pieces of information on the card, which may be devastating for the cardholder. This calls for installation of security patches to protect cardholder data from external threats.
7. By using authorized personnel entrance into the cardholder data, systems and processes restrict unauthorized personnel to access cardholder data, which may enable another security element to be considered.
8. Identification and authentication of system components to a selected personnel profiles, which may enable unique identification and access grant for certain individuals, which allows accountability to access critical data available on the system.
9. In order to prevent unauthorized access, physical access to cardholder data is extremely restricted to a few certain individuals.
10. With the modern tools intact, tracking and monitoring access to cardholder data and identifying the networks through which cardholder data is being access is important, which may enable a proper security measure to be set in place. This may minimize the risk of losing essential sensitive data to unknown identities.
11. In order to pertain security measures, it is important to consider the testing of system processes and security measures on a regular basis. Since developing times allow new threats to advent into the software world, posing integrity threat to various software systems, it is important to keep the security measures upgraded.
12. Maintain the information on security measures intact for cardholder data.

Hence, it is important to consider this information, hence, EvolveODM is a UK based company that keeps all these compliances check intact and checks for the integrity of the security measures set in place for the cardholder data.