As the scary headlines continue to remind business owners of how vulnerable they are to a cyberattack, we wanted to emphasize how we help protect the sensitive data stored in your custom software from a breach. There are three primary ways we include cybersecurity protection in your custom software solution: PCI Compliance, Data Encryption, and IP Restrictions.
Let’s review each of these.
PCI is an acronym for the Payment Card Industry. PCI has a security framework called the Data Security Standard (DSS). These requirements are mandatory for any business handling the processing of plastic cards -- branded debit and credit cards.
With the PCI DSS framework, your business is required to protect your customers’ financial and personal data, all data stored as a result of financial transactions with payment cards. This can easily be overlooked when it comes to software. Just like with your point-of-sale machine and provider, your software needs to ensure the protection of this data.
The PCI Security Standards Council is a group formed by the credit card companies to develop the PCI DSS framework, which includes nearly 500 requirements and procedures. That said, it is you, the business owner, who is ultimately responsible for staying compliant and protecting your customers’ data. Incorporating these measures into your software isn’t optional, for your own good.
Through strong passwords, restricted access, and employee training, we hope to keep hackers away from your data. However, we also want to make that data is unusable should it land in the wrong hands. The last thing you want is your users’ data showing up on the dark web with your business as the source of the breach. That’s where encryption comes in.
Data Encryption requires strong passwords and encryption keys to access data. That means not just anybody can access an organization’s data. Data can be encrypted when it is stored, when it is transmitted across a network, and during active communication. As part of the custom software development plan, we ensure that access to data is on a need-to-know, user-level basis and that data is protected by encryption as it is read, stored, and written in your software databases. With the right data encryption algorithm, your data will be safe from hackers.
An IP address is a computer network address, a series of numbers, that is unique to every network connection. It’s much like the address number on your building. Imagine if you could keep door-to-door salespeople from seeing your building’s address? That’s how IP restrictions work. Your software needs the ability to restrict who can “find” it on the internet. This will keep many hackers at bay, as they often find vulnerable companies through random attempts at these IP addresses.
As we mentioned, IP addresses are the front door to your network and your software. It is important for your custom software to restrict access to those who have explicit permission to log into your software. Additionally, it is important to log events of others trying to access your software in order to understand what hackers are attempting to breach and to keep your software safe -- always staying a few steps ahead of the attackers.
As custom software developers, we make cybersecurity part of our entire development process, including PCI Compliance, Data Encryption, and IP Restrictions. We also ensure cybersecurity best practices like strong passwords, role-based permission access to data, event logging, and more.
Learn more about how we help your organization stay ahead of the attackers. Check out our Cybersecurity Services.