According to a recent report, 80 percent of worldwide companies do not meet widely accepted data security standards for their payment card processing systems, which means they are more susceptible to hackers and cyber criminals. The data was collected for the Verizon 2015 Payment Card Industry Compliance Report, which stated that the 2015 statistics were actually an improvement over last year where it was found that 89 percent did not meet minimum standards.
The report also found that companies that passed a compliance test for PCI Data Security Standards struggled to maintain required standards. Of those who passed, only 29 percent were still fully compliant with DSS less than one year after being certified.
According to the report, “more than half of the companies were in the Americas, with slightly less than one-quarter each in Asia and Europe and the Middle East. Thirty percent of the companies were in the financial sector, 26 percent were retail, 15 percent were hospitality and 29 percent were categorized as other.”