Vodacom announced today that it has become the first telecommunications company in South Africa to be awarded with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard (DSS) Merchant Level 1 compliance certification. This certification has been awarded by the PCI DSS Security Standards Council.   

The PCI DSS Security Standards Council offers a robust and comprehensive set of standards and materials that enhance the security of payment card data. These standards and materials include a framework of specifications, measurements, tools and support resources that assists organisations ensure the safe guard of cardholder information at every step.

The introduction of the PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards) has revolutionised security within the e-commerce industry, with respect to the way in which credit card data is handled and stored. E-commerce activity is now immeasurably more safe as well as secure.

Why make use of a PCI compliant data centre?

According to the company the simple answer to this question is assurance. Assurance that a computing environment will be designed, implemented and managed in a state-of-the-art manner to protect valuable information to the maximum extent possible.

Chris Ross, managing executive for Commercial Development at Vodacom comments: “We are delighted to be able to offer our business customers the peace of mind that this certification brings. As the take up of virtual services, cloud computing and hosted solutions increases, so too will the need to assure customers their data is safe and secure. The PCI DSS Merchant Level 1 certification is the global standard we have striven to comply with.”

 

In related news Vodacom also recently announced a revision of its data services structure and pricing, which will see contract data customers saving up to 43% and get double their data for free with Night Owl, moving the effective savings to as high as 72%.