PCI in Review

The number of customer data breaches has reportedly decreased from over 350 Million in 2008 to less than 4 million in 2010 according to Verizon Communications research.  Visa Inc. along with the PCI Council instituted programs to encourage more usage of EMV (chip and pinpad or smartcard) with incentives to reduce PCI compliance fees if they met implementation deadlines.
Visa issued its own study showing that in 2010 there was a larger percentage of payment service
providers that were improving their PCI compliance.

• In January 2011 Version 2.0 of PCI DSS and PA-DSS became effective.
• In February 2011 the PCI Council announced newly enhanced educational offerings.
• In March 2011 the PCI Council strengthened approved scanning vendor programs with a new PCI DSS training program.
• In June PCI Council announced that PCI Awareness online training is now available as well as virtualization guidelines for PCI compliance.
• In August 2011 the PCI Council released guidelines for the tokenization security process as well as PCI wireless guidelines.
• In September PCI Council published requirements for using advanced, E2E (end to end), and encryption to limit PCI scope.
• In October 2011 after stating they would no longer approve any mobile application as PCI certified, they announced that they would offer testing for encryption used in new mobile devices that manufacturers were developing or that merchants had in use. 
• In November 2011 the PCI council announced that special interest groups would be involved in studying online and cloud computing security in 2012 to establish new security compliance standards.

PCI will continue to grow and evolve.  If you have not started addressing PCI in your business there is no better time than now to begin.  Make it your New Year’s resolution to reach out for assistance and protect yourself as soon as possible.  Contact an STCR Representative for more information at (607) 757-0181.

Update on GS1

In recent weeks manufacturer coupons with the GS1 DataBar, as the only bar code, have entered the marketplace.  Retailers will being seeing these coupons in larger numbers in the weeks and months to come.  The expectation is that most retailers are able to process them at the checkout.  The National Grocers Association found that just 55% of independent grocers were prepared to handle the DataBar at the checkout, with another 10% expected to be ready in the first half of 2012.

The Joint Industry Coupon Committee (JICC), the multi-association industry group that sets coupon policies, originally set January 2010 as the voluntary launch date of DataBar-only coupons without the UPC-A.  However, it became clear that many retailers were still not prepared, so the issuing of the DataBar-only coupons was postponed until the end of 2011 or the first quarter of 2012.

In the coming months and years, GS1 Member Organizations will continue to work with their retailer communities to determine when GS1 DataBar will be used in open trade on any items between 2012 and 2014.  At this point, 2014 is the date when GS1 DataBar can be used globally in any open trade on any product.

To be ready for GS1 DataBar, your POS system needs to have the scanning hardware and the POS software, including your back office application, that maintain the POS item files capable of reading and processing this format.  If you need to know if your POS system is ready, please contact an STCR Representative at (607) 757-0181.

Enterprise-Class Security

It’s not necessary for a smaller company to skimp on security.  SonicWALL delivers state-of-the-art, comprehensive security that is both affordable and easy to implement.  Too little security can be worse than no security at all, and the small business that simply implements any minimal firewall and forgets it, often has a false sense of security and more often than not, falls victim to unexpected attack.  SonicWALL’s TZ line of Internet Security Appliances, designed for the SMB market, deliver enterprise-class security at a small business price.

Layered Protection

The SonicWALL TZ family of appliances are total security platforms that offer layered protection.  Ideally suited for the SMB market, the TZ line features a compact form factor and an easy-to-use interface.  Its sheer power transcends its small size, and users are able to enjoy true layered security with integrated gateway anti-virus, anti-spyware and intrusion prevention for real-time protection against a wide array of threats.  The SonicOS operating system, standard on the TZ family of appliances, gives small business users a streamlined web-based GUI, easy-to-use configuration and management tools, and wizards to guide you through the configuration process.  Both wired and wireless appliances are available to meet every possible configuration requirement.

Secure content management

Content-based threats are a constant problem for businesses of any size, and SMBs are vulnerable to the same types of attacks that the largest enterprises face.  Secure content management keeps your network free from harmful content.  As part of this protection,  e-mail security also keeps your e-mail inboxes free from virus-laden e-mails, SPAM and phishing attacks through a combination of technologies that improve response time and ensure full protection—all the while delivering superior performance and no delays.

Continuous data protection

SonicWALL® Continuous Data Protection (CDP) Series offers the only complete end-to-end backup and recovery solution for SMBs.  An ideal replacement for tape-based systems, CDP provides foolproof, intuitive, continual protection.  Policy-driven CDP is transparent to the end-user, ensuring that data, applications and systems are reliably protected.  Because most recovery involves a single file, CDP’s self-directed restore by the end-user helps meet service levels while reducing burden on IT support. SonicWALL CDP takes the complexity out of safeguarding your data by automating tedious tasks to provide a true low-touch solution.  CDP provides flexible Offsite Data Backup, Site-to-Site Data Backup, Local Archiving and Bare Metal Recovery with SonicWALL Universal Restore options to address any disaster recovery scenario.

Access to STCR's Premier Help Desk is Easy

We understand our clients' business and the mission critical role the solutions we provide perform.  Recognizing this, STCR has been offering easy access to 24x7x365 support for decades.

We maintain a team staffed with a highly qualified seasoned Retail Systems Analysts who are constantly updating their skills with ongoing product training.  We are always on stand-by to provide immediate assistance.  As an IBM Premier Business Partner we consistently demonstrate a proven capability to deliver knowledgeable technical support; ensuring positive outcomes and achieving one of the highest customer satisfaction rates.

With an active Help Desk maintenance agreement in place access to our technical support team is only a phone call away.  You can reach us anytime at 800-776-6576.  With a quick call you are speaking to a live person who gathers some basic information.  This initiates an issue ticket that is assigned to a team member who starts promptly assisting you.  We appreciate the importance of getting timely answers and resolutions in a busy supermarket environment and always work quickly to meet those needs.

We also understand not every situation requires immediate assistance and people welcome convenient alternatives to submitting support requests.  With this in mind we launched the STCR Online Help Desk web portal, enabling our customers to open a new incident as well as review the status and history of previous incidents.  Email is yet another option to begin the process.  We use an industry leading call tracking system to monitor all calls.  It supports process automation to escalate and ensure follow up.

In an effort to constantly improve our support services every customer has an opportunity to let us know how we are doing by participating in our ‘Satisfaction Call Back’ process.  We know our systems and that support is critical to our customers' operation.  We take an active interest in soliciting this vital feedback.  Of course everyone loves to hear how great they're doing, but more importantly we value the insights that help us improve our service delivery and always move quickly to correct any reported concerns.

STCR knows very well our clients' businesses depend on these systems and our support.  It has always been our mission to deliver exceptional service and proven solutions.  We are constantly striving to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction.  Discover the difference we can bring and let us help take care of your business.  We're just a phone call away.