Ensuring Your Institution Meets PCI Security Standards

PCI security standards are managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, and they affect all merchants and service providers. Nelnet Campus Commerce is a Level 1 Service Provider, so they have a very rigorous certification process. And of the 352 companies that are globally qualified security assessors, CampusGuard is the only one that’s focused solely on higher education.

You are responsible for safeguarding the credit card data at your institution and complying with the PCI DSS. In your Merchant Agreement with your acquiring bank, it states that you are responsible for adhering to and being compliant with their security standard, and also with the PCI DSS.

Over the past several years, I’ve been looking at statistics regarding where breaches are coming from. Compared to all other sectors, higher education has a disproportionate share. The other thing that’s shocking is that approximately 50 percent of the breaches occurring in higher education are a direct result of hacking. By comparison, the total number of hacking breaches among retailers is under 20 percent.