For more than a decade, Verizon has documented compliance trends in the evolving payment security industry. The Payment Security Report (PSR) has tracked compliance ups and downs, while keeping a finger on the pulse of the changing payment security landscape.

During this time, consumers and businesses substantially increased business activities conducted online. The COVID-19 pandemic escalated that trend and, as a result, the number of payment card transactions also increased.

Meanwhile, the capabilities of threat actors continue to evolve and escalate, enabling the skillful exploitation of both existing and emerging threats and weaknesses within payment systems and processes.

Despite Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance improving significantly in 2020, the cybersecurity threats organizations face are more cunning and evasive than they were even two years ago, the 2022 Verizon Payment Security Report reveals.

As organizations prepare to implement PCI DSS v4.0, the 2022 PSR provides valuable insights to pivot and adapt to the new Standard.

The reports logical approach to the strategic management of complex compliance challenges appears to be making a positive difference for businesses.

This year’s report found that, overall, PCI DSS compliance improved significantly in 2020, with 43.4% of organizations maintaining full compliance, compared to 27.9% in 2019.

Additionally, while over half (56.7%) of organizations failed their interim validation assessment due to one or more security controls omissions, the security control gap still improved substantially, from a high 7.7% in 2019 to a low 4.0% in 2020.

“Despite compliance improvements, we know that bad actors are still out there and stronger than ever,” comments Sampath Sowmyanarayan, CEO, Verizon Business.

“Our own 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report (2022 DBIR) found the financial sector continues to be victimized by motivated organized crime, with servers being involved in 90% of financial breaches.

As a result, working harder on your current strategy is unlikely to move the needle. To remain safe in today’s heightened cybersecurity climate, organizations will need to approach their objectives and goals at a project, program and strategic level.”

Design priorities for PCI DSS v4.0

CISOs and their teams will need to apply a logical, coordinated process to evaluate requirements and constraints of PCI DSS v4.0, while navigating their way through the changes.

To help organizations within the payment industry simplify the complexity of these new measures and ensure data security, the 2022 PSR includes a “toolbox” of management models and frameworks useful for negotiating PCI DSS v4.0.

As the report highlights, the challenges organizations encounter with data security and compliance management have identifiable cause-and-effect relationships.

The key to achieving ongoing growth and stability of security and compliance program performance is to find a way to focus resources on only the parts within the security environment that are currently limiting or blocking further improvement—the weakest links, system constraints or leverage points.

As such, strategic planning, coordination and execution at an operational level is paramount for averting costly data breaches.

Potential impact of 5G on payment card compliance

The appeal of emerging technologies, such as 5G and edge computing, gained significant momentum when the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the weakest links of the financial services industry.

The speed and stability of 5G will continue to enhance the mobile experience for the payments industry—providing greater customer security through advanced biometric-based identification and verification methods.

It also will provide more secure connections for video conferencing, with participants such as financial professionals and loan counsellors.

Financial institutions and merchants will continue to find innovative ways to benefit from 5G-enhanced features, open architecture and Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) technologies. At the same time, security practitioners need to explore how these new innovations might impact the PCI DSS compliance posture.