If asking what the fastest-growing youth sport is, a common response might be, “soccer.” But the reality is that the sport of rugby grew faster than any other sport, adding 81 percent more players in a five-year span between 2008 and 2013 .
What does this have to do with cyber-security and the payment processing industry? Plenty. Imagine someone grew up playing football, but now has a child that wants to play rugby. The only similarities between the two sports might be the shape of the ball and the word “touchdown.”
The landscape has changed for payment processing, and cyber-security is like rugby when compared to the old ways of doing things.
However, parents know full well: if a child wants to play rugby, pretty soon the parents need to become experts on the sport, or they’ll be left behind.
T1 Payments employs a similar approach to the world of payment processing: understand the game, know its rules backwards and forwards. “PCI compliance is only part of the game,” said Donald Kasdon, president and CEO, T1 Payments. “You want to know that your payment processor is up to speed on all of the rules and regulations, and is two steps ahead of changes in the industry. You need to know that they are playing the right game, and that they understand the nuances of that game and how it continues to evolve and change. This is why we work with a variety of colleagues – in law enforcement and fraud prevention, in cyber-security, with the credit industry and the card companies – to discuss trends, strategies and effective techniques for keeping our customers out of harm’s way.”
With a complex rulebook, it might take hours to develop the appropriate strategy, depending on the size of the business, the type of transactions they typically conduct, and how much of their business is mobile or online. However, some typical tactics that T1 employs include:
- Deep relationships with the “white hat” hacker community, so that knowledge of how breaches can happen are front and center, and the proper protocols can be created to avoid those breaches;
- An understanding of the unique needs of different merchants and industry segments, keeping an eye on the trends that can keep data out of the wrong hands, such as terminals where the card never leaves the consumer;
- Leading-edge security techniques to ensure PCI compliance even for those merchants that don’t store card data.
T1’s Donald Kasdon is available to speak with the media about his company’s unique customer-service philosophy. He will be on-site at Money 20/20 from October 23 through 26. To arrange an interview, contact Dave Van de Walle at [email protected] or 1.224.766.0003
This article has been published by the Huffington Post.