PCI Compliance / PA-DSS Implementation

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Introduction

In order to address the growing national and international concern for securing credit card information, Visa began to develop standards and announced the Cardholder Information Security Program (CISP) in April, 2000. These standards became required in June, 2001, for all entities that store, process or transmit Visa cardholder data.

Since that time, other credit card companies have become involved, and a new group called the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council was formed to standardize security requirements across the entire credit card industry. The result is a new security standard called Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS or simply 'PCI') which is designed to ensure standardized compliance for multiple associations.

This document is provided to guide users of Campground Master into becoming and remaining PCI compliant.

Why you need to be concerned about this

Credit Card companies are requiring compliance with PCI standards for every entity that is involved in the storage, processing, or transmission of credit card information. Failure to comply can result in denial or revocation of your organization's ability to process credit cards.

Furthermore, as these standards have become widely recognized, non-compliance places your organization at risk of legal and/or civil consequences if credit card information becomes compromised.

Compliance with PCI standards is necessary whether or not you use Campground Master to process transactions "online." Even if you use a POS terminal or other method to process transactions, and simply retain information in Campground Master, you must be concerned about proper use of the program to maintain security and confidentiality of customer data.