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PCI Service Provider Dilemma: A Chain Can Control The Manager But Not The Managed

Written by Evan Schuman
May 20th, 2010
When a retailer outsources any function to a third party, it can protect itself through legal contracts (the threat to sue) and through early termination or simply not renewing the service (the threat to stop giving the third party money). But in the PCI payment-card-data-protection world, responsibilities and punishment for non-performance become a lot murkier.

In this week's PCI column, Walter Conway makes an eloquent argument that chains must take special care to protect their data when changing processors. But Walt only briefly touches on the responsibility issues involving those processors. In PCI Requirement 12.8, the PCI powers-that-be mandate that the retailer properly manage the service provider, but they don't say what happens if the service provider does something wrong anyway.

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Posted in E-Commerce, In-Store, Payment Systems, Premium Content, Security/Fraud
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One Comment | Read PCI Service Provider Dilemma: A Chain Can Control The Manager But Not The Managed

  1. Robert Martell Says:
    May 24th, 2010 at 10:15 pm

    While it would be nice to see that the customer is not impacted, I don’t see that happening, no matter how this all falls out.
    Higher prices, higher fees. Somehow the consumer will pay for it.

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