Data security challenges small firms.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT - Survey

According to a recent survey conducted by Visa USA and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), 57 percent of small businesses do not consider securing customer data something that requires formal planning, and 39 percent said they rely on common sense to keep data safe.

With the frequency of data breaches today, that's just not good enough. Visa recently announced a program to help U.S. small businesses improve their security by urging them to reduce the data they store.

"Data security breaches involving payment card information occur at small businesses more frequently than at all other merchant levels combined," Michael E. Smith, Visa USA senior vice president of enterprise risk and compliance, said in a release.

Visa and NFIB have partnered to educate small businesses on data security threats and how to successfully avoid them. As part of their efforts, Visa and NFIB have developed free educational materials and tools, available at www.nfib.com/object/IO_ 32561. html, to help small businesses protect themselves from data fraud.

Visa said small businesses should evaluate all cardholder data that they currently store. Visa's campaign to educate merchants about cardholder data security stresses the message, "Don't store it if you don't need it."

"Minimizing data storage is the easiest thing a small business can do to mitigate risk," Smith said.

Visa's program also calls for acquiring financial institutions (those that contract with merchants for acceptance of Visa card payments) to strengthen their existing data security efforts to identify and address risks among their small merchant customers, including identifying whether merchants are storing sensitive account data and are complying with the industry-wide Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a mandatory compliance guideline developed by the major credit card companies to help organizations that process card payments prevent credit card fraud, hacking, and other...