Guidelines and Best Practices

Guidelines and Best Practices

Best practices and security guidelines for the prevention of skimming are based on successfully established countermeasures as identified by the merchant community, and known criminal activity as observed and investigated by the payment industry and law enforcement. Guidelines and best practices fall within three major areas.

• Merchant Physical Location and Security: Many merchants have realized the benefits of operational and physical security countermeasures that not only provide a consistent brand image and transparent consumer experience, but also have the necessary physical security and operational controls required to support their retail locations and POS environment.
• Terminals and Terminal Infrastructure Security: Leveraging PCI SSC standards and approved devices should be considered a core component of any terminal security effort. Merchants should make every effort to leverage and use the controls, standards, and devices, already established by PCI SSC for the protection of devices and data at the point of sale. The guidelines and recommended practices we provide complement those standards.
• Staff and Service Access to Payment Devices: Employee and staff conduct should be a critical concern to all merchants, specifically in the processing of payment data and services.