Retailers are increasingly becoming victims of data security attacks as indicated by many recent highly publicized credit card leaks and other security incidents. While public awareness of the issue is growing and regulatory requirements are becoming tighter, a failure to implement adequate technical safeguards can today result in major financial losses and disastrous brand damage.
Whereas security measures are commonly implemented for credit card transaction with external processors, the security of file transfers, host access, and other application connections in the internal retail network has often been overlooked. As retailers systematically collect large amounts of cardholder data for marketing purposes, sensitive consumer data is continuously exposed if the transmitted data is not encrypted.
To address the retail security challenges, Visa and Mastercard have created a worldwide standard called the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) for consumer data protection across the industry. The PCI standard specifies technical requirements that all retail companies need to comply with. The specific technical requirements of the standard include encrypting sensitive information across public networks, developing and maintaining secure systems and applications, and tracking and monitoring all access to network resources and cardholder data.
With SSH Tectia, the retail industry can secure transmission of sensitive consumer data throughout the heterogeneous retail networks in compliance with the credit card industry’s PCI standard. Transparent FTP-SFTP conversion functionality of SSH Tectia enables highly cost-effective means of securing internal data communications without the need to modify existing scripted file transfers. Broad platform support including Windows, Unix, Linux, and mainframe, enables seamless cross-platform connectivity between in-store servers and centralized servers and mainframe systems. Centralized management with SSH Tectia Manager reduces total costs by automating software deployment and maintenance, as well as providing reliable environment monitoring capability.
