Verizon Communications Inc. has been approved to host payment applications at its data centers.
The New York company said Wednesday that its hardware had been certified as meeting the requirements of two key credit card security standards. The certification should make it easier for its clients to pass their own security audits, Verizon said.
The security consulting firm TrustWave Holdings Inc. has certified that Verizon complies with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, which defines how merchants must protect account data, and with Visa U.S.A. Inc.'s comparable Cardholder Information Security Program.
Verizon's data centers host a variety of business applications, including e-commerce software for online merchants. It counts First Data Corp. and TSYS Acquiring Solutions, a unit of Total System Services Inc., among its 60 to 80 clients for the hosting service.
The card industry's security rules require merchants, depending on their size, either to perform a self-assessment or to undergo an audit by a third party. If the merchant outsources some of its work, such as the checkout software at a Web site, the hosting company must also comply with the standards.
"The ultimate burden for compliance does rest with our customer, but this eases the audit burden," Laura Elliott, the manager of information technology solutions product marketing for Verizon, said in an interview. "The driver for our going out and doing this was an existing customer base that has a need," but Verizon also plans to tout the certifications to prospective customers, who might "perceive it as a differentiator."
