Secure Online Payment Systems

With the rising incidents of security compromises, it is very important to protect customer's personal information like credit card number, PIN number etc. During online payment process, cardholder's information is obtained which is very confidential and therefore must be protected by merchants using payment system software developed by software development companies in India or globe. However, cyber criminals are targeting merchants' system vulnerabilities to gain unauthorized access to these confidential information.

To protect cardholder data, five global payment brands, American Express, MasterCard Worldwide, Visa Inc., Discover Financial Services and JCB International launched PCI(Payment Card Industry) Security standards council.

PCIDSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. It ensures that merchants' credit card processing procedures meet certain security requirements as follow to make online payment systems secure:

• Install and maintain firewall configuration to protect data
• Protect stored data
• Restrict physical access to cardholder data
• Encrypt transmission of cardholder data and sensitive information across public networks
• Track and monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data

This PCIDSS applies to all organizations that store, process or transmit cardholder data. Every business that accepts credit card or debit card processing payments and stores, processes and transmits payment card data must meet PCIDSS standard. There are other ways to make online payment systems secure which are as follow:

Authentication:

1. Both parties during online transaction should be able to feel comfortable that they are communicating with the party with whom they think they are communicating. 
2. Applications developed by custom software development companies in India usually perform authentication checks through security tokens or by verifying digital certificates issued by certificate authorities. 

Access Control:

1. The prevention of unauthorized use of a resource like cardholder data.
2. This service controls who can have access to a resource, under what conditions access can occur, and what those accessing the resource are allowed to do.

Data Confidentiality:

1. The protection of data from unauthorized disclosure.
2. The way to ensure confidentiality of cardholder data like credit card number, PIN number is Strong Encryption.
3. Data is kept secret from those without the proper credentials.
4. It is also known as secrecy.

Data Integrity:

1. The assurance that data received are exactly as sent by an authorized entity.
2. It Prevents the unauthorized modification of data during online transactions.
3. Cardholder data travel through multiple routers on the open network to reach their destinations. Online payment systems must make sure that the information is not modified during transaction.
4. It is also known as Anti-tampering.

Non-Repudiation:

1. It provides protection against denial by one of the entities involved in an online transaction of having participated in all or part of transaction.
2. Non-repudiation is usually provided through digital signatures and public key certificates.

Secure Socket-Layer(SSL) protocol:

1. It ensures confidentiality, by encrypting the cardholder data that moves between the communicating parties (customer and the merchant).
2. It also provides authentication of the session partners(customer and merchant), using RSA algorithm.

3D-Secure software:

1. This is developed by software development companies in India.
2. It ties the financial authorization process with an online authentication. This authentication is based on three-domain model.
3. When a transaction is performed using 3D-secure, it starts a redirection to the website of the card issuing bank to authorize a transaction.

Conclusion:

The beauty of the internet is attracting customers from around the world. However, it also attracts cyber criminals and so payment security is very necessary. PCIDSS is a security standard which has to be followed by every organization to secure cardholder data of customers. There are many software available for payment security provided by software development companies in India which facilitates data confidentiality, integrity, authentication, authorization etc.