The Green Sheet Online Edition
August 8, 2020 • 20:08:01
Readers Speak: Get educated on security
We wish to thank Meagan Elguera, corporate communications manager at Security Metrics, who sent in the following on the importance of cybersecurity for small businesses and merchants: "Right now, merchants are feeling the crunch: layoffs, operational or logistical changes, employee stress, and uncertainty are putting many merchants and businesses through the ringer," she wrote. "As if employees and owners weren't wearing enough hats, they also have to stay on top of cybersecurity and compliance. Cyberattacks, malware infections and data breaches just kick businesses while they're down. The outcome of these attacks can mean the difference between staying open and shutting the doors.
"While the negative impact of data breaches is large, many times the reason the breach happened is small — someone left a port open or didn't check the logs. In fact, lack of security education is a major contributor to data breaches: 65 percent of breaches investigated by SecurityMetrics were due to a lack of logging or log monitoring, which is a foundational data security principle."In some cases, merchants may not even know which security mandates apply to them and could be facing serious, unknown security gaps. Small merchants need more access to cyber security fundamentals education. This is why SecurityMetrics offers a free, virtual platform called SecurityMetrics Academy for small businesses that need more familiarity with the data security and payments security compliance world (PCI DSS)."
Elguera went on to quote SecurityMetrics Director of Content Marketing Eric Smith, who said, "Whether a business needs education about phishing emails, data security compliance or malware, we want to help simplify their educational path and help them orientate themselves in the data security and PCI DSS compliance realm."
She also noted that courses are available as an all-in-one section or in separate modules, including Policies and Procedures, Managing Sensitive Data, Security Tools, Responding to a Data Breach and Compliance Mandates. For more information, please visit the SecurityMetrics Academy at https://academy.securitymetrics.com/courses/compliance-mandates-free-course.
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Do you have an informed opinion about goings on in today's payments industry? Can you recommend free educational offering for your peers? Drop us a line at greensheet@greensheet.com. 
Whether you want to upgrade your POS offerings, find a payment gateway partner, bone up on fintech regs or PCI requirements, find an upcoming trade show, read about faster payments, or discover the latest innovations in merchant acquiring, The Green Sheet is the resource for you. Since 1983, we've helped empower and connect payments professionals, starting with the merchant level salespeople who bring tailored payment acceptance and digital commerce tools, along with a host of other business services to merchants across the globe. The Green Sheet Inc. is also a proud affiliate of Bankcard Life, a premier community that provides industry-leading training and resources for payment professionals.
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