VISA announced today that the majority of their merchants were PCI DSS v1.1 compliant. Specifically, 99% of Level 1 Merchants and 92% of Level 2 Merchants have met compliance or have submitted an approved remediation program. This is a huge increase in compliant organizations year over year, and much congratulations is due to the merchants and Visa who worked to get this done. A fortunate by product of this is, hopefully, we will see some similar successes and releases by the other four card associations that make up the majors. It is important to realize that Visa is only one of the four, and the others are just as important to ensuring consumer confidence, and eliminating credit card / identity theft through the payment transaction system.
In addition, I found a study released showing that those organizations that are PCI Compliant have a lower instance of fraud, as a result. This is in line with my earlier article here and here at IT Compliance and Controls.
Well done Visa and the associated merchants in this release, and here is to making 2008 a far better year than 2007 for online security and consumer credit card confidence.
An article on the press release and its impacts on consumers and merchants is available here by SC Magazine, and here.
Best,
James DeLuccia
Technology, Strategy, and Cybersecurity - explored, explained, and examined 
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