Smart phones have become an essential part of our lives, and we store everything on them, from our emails, facebook, text messages, events, tasks and contacts. Losing such a device is therefore a real nightmare, as you will not only lose access to all of this information, but if your device falls into the wrong [...]

Last year PCI DSS 1.2 was released changing the intent of the controls required for anti-virus software. In version 1.1 anti-virus software was only required for systems commonly affected by viruses and excluded UNIX based operating systems and mainframes. Version 1.2 now requires all operating system types commonly affected by malicious software be protected and [...]

I recently had a discussion with a potential customer on why they should work with ZZ Servers instead of one of the now hundreds of other hosting providers offering PCI “compliant” hosting services. After spending the last 5 years doing PCI Level 1 validations I have run into many areas that hosting providers just do [...]

Any merchant who accepts credit cards and has a merchant account must validate compliance. It does not matter if you use a 3rd party processor or if you outsource all of your credit card processing. It’s the ownership of the merchant account that defines if you must validate compliance. The only to avoid PCI compliance [...]

In an ongoing saga, one of the most popular web hosting message boards www.webhostingtalk.com has been dealt another serious blow to it’s security.  Late last month, Webhostingtalk was hacked in a deliberate, sophisticated and calculated manner. The attacker was able to circumvent their security measures and access via a backdoor protected by a firewall to [...]

As of October 1, 2008 the PCI Data Security Standard version 1.2 became active. There are a number of changes to PCI DSS since version 1.1. Version 1.2 removes much of the ambiguity from earlier versions and provides additional details on items such as the use wireless devices.