a global forum for the ongoing development, enhancement, storage, dissemination, and implementation of security standards for account data protection. The Standards Council was established by the major credit card associations (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, JCB) as a separate organization to de ne appropriate practices that merchants and service providers should follow to protect cardholder data. It is this council of companies that created the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS). “ “