Intellitactics, a provider in enterprise security and compliance management solutions, has joined the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) as a Participating Organization. Through its role on the Standards Council, Intellitactics will help to evolve payment card data protection standards, including the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Intellitactics' commitment to support the payment card industry as it addresses new challenges of protecting cardholder data is reflected in the capabilities of all the Intellitactics products.

The PCI Security Standards Council was founded by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa International as an open, global forum for the ongoing development, enhancement, storage, dissemination, and implementation of security standards for account data protection. The PCI Security Standards Council's mission is to enhance payment account data security by fostering broad adoption of the PCI Security Standards.

"Intellitactics counts founding members of the Council as customers and accepts its role as a vendor to promote and educate businesses on the requirements and value of the PCI DSS global benchmarks intended to improve security throughout the entire payment-card transaction process," explains Pamela Casale, Chief Marketing Officer at Intellitactics. "Compliance with the 12 PCI guidelines poses challenges not only for point of sale systems that handle credit card data directly, but also for the intricate infrastructure underlying a payment system. Required audits and audit preparation cycles are expensive and distract human resources from other important security initiatives. PCI itself is constantly evolving and, as such, the requirements continue to change. Many organizations that have successfully passed a PCI audit are not insulated from expensive and damaging cardholder breaches. The too frequent headlines attest to these facts."