Eckoh, a developer of speech recognition solutions for customer contact centers, ihas earned certification of full compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (“PCI DSS” or “the standard”), which is a set of comprehensive requirements for enhancing account data security.
The PCI DSS is the payment card industry requirement for all organisations that store, process, or transmit credit or debit cardholder data. It was developed by the founding payment brands of the PCI Security Standards Council, such as American Express, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa, to facilitate the adoption of consistent data security measures that ensure customer card information is managed securely through a complete and multifaceted array of security policies, practices and controls.
PCI DSS has four levels of attainment, each with different compliance validation procedures. Eckoh has achieved Level 1, which is the highest possible standard. To achieve this accreditation, Eckoh was required to conduct a thorough review of its access controls, infrastructure, software, security policies, and procedures, and implement any necessary amendments to satisfy the compliance criteria. This was followed by a full and detailed external audit with a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), who tested and confirmed compliance with all the requirements. Eckoh has invested more than two years and 10,000 man hours to complete the process.
Eckoh is now fully accredited to offer solutions to process credit and debit card payments made over the telephone and Web. This service helps mitigate the risk for Eckoh’s clients by reducing or eliminating the handling of card data by contact center agents. In addition, by providing a compliant service, Eckoh helps to satisfy its clients’ PCI DSS requirements in a cost-effective and efficient manner.
The Company’s EckohPAY product enables users to make real-time, secure, and compliant phone and Web card payments, and was designed specifically for the expected demand from PCI DSS. Clients already using EckohPAY include Ministry of Justice, Vue, Northern Ireland Electricity, Comic Relief, Utilita, and Northumbrian Water.
“Our PCI DSS accreditation is the culmination of a long and onerous process. Its achievement represents a critical milestone in our strategy to aggressively grow our sales of card payment solutions, and we are confident that it will facilitate Eckoh in winning new customers," said Nik Philpot, CEO of Eckoh. "We are already benefitting from higher demand as our client base in this market continues to grow and the potential implications of non-compliance with PCI DSS become more widely understood. The volume of card payments we are processing is increasing rapidly and is now at an annual run rate of £190 million, and this growth is set to continue. We look forward to increasing our value as a partner to our clients and enabling them to deliver a better service to their customers.”