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Data security guides issued to organisations

New guidelines to govern the credit and debit card industry have been issued obligating it to take measures to protect consumers from online threats posed by cyber crooks.

Under the new guidelines issued by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI), the industry is required to streamline its wireless network and anti-virus defences.

Additionally the industry is required to prepare itself for the introduction of new rules on end-to-end encryption and virtualisation in the shaking up of the rules geared towards safer transactions.

"This latest revision to the PCI DSS is welcome news for merchants and service providers as they grapple with the latest security threats to their payment transactions systems," said Diana Kelley, partner and analyst with data security consultancy SecurityCurve.

"The clarifications and language revisions should go a long way in easing implementation questions and help to reduce compliance costs."

Earlier guidelines had left many organisations confused and the new PCI 1.2 data security standard (DSS) has been released to clarify key parts of the earlier 12-part PCI 1.1 standard that were causing the anxiety.

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