With the burgeoning popularity of online shopping and banking, credit card transactions are flourishing. Consequently, credit card fraud is on the rise.To combat this growing menace, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) was developed.

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), developed by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council, which consists of vendors such as VISA, Master Card, American Express, Discover and JCB, provides payment card data protection requirements for organizations that process card payments.

This guide will help you assess and compare the cost of managing payment security via an on-premises or hosted operations model. Topics include:

Working together, the major payment card providers have developed a set of data security standards and created a council for enforcing them. Although the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) has become a global requirement, many organizations are lagging in compliance.

There's no doubt protecting payment information during transmission, processing and storage is a business imperative. But, the current "lock-down" approach, which focuses on encrypting payment data within your environment, has proven inadequate, unmanageable, or both. Think about it.

As the economy begins to show signs of a pending recovery, medium and large businesses continue to shift their attention from payment processing to payment processing management-meaning, there's an increasing emphasis on improving the process of managing payments throughout the entire order acceptance lifecycle, not just transacting a payment at the time of sale.

This report is based on a survey of U.S. and Canadian online merchants. Decision makers who participated in this survey represent a blend of small, medium and large-sized organizations based in North America. Merchant experience levels range from companies in their first year of online transactions to some of the largest e-retailers and digital distribution entities in the world.