Panoptic Security Inc. is offering to lease or sell complete software packages for Payments Card Industry data security standards compliance, ending the need for payments processors to pay vendors monthly compliance fees for each of their merchants.
“We put it within your walls,” Leslie Norris, Panoptic executive vice president, tells PaymentsSource sister publication ISO&Agent Weekly of the company’s plans to sell entire PCI-compliance systems.
Rick Oglesby, a senior analyst for Boston-based Aite Group, says he has not heard of any other vendors offering to sell a self-contained system but believes PCI compliance lends itself to a monthly regime.
“It’s definitely a different approach, but it’s not going to revolutionize the world,” Oglesby says of the Panoptic offering.
PCI requirements and remediation continue to change, so processors that buy an in-house compliance system still would require updates, he maintains.
Selling a complete system might help a vendor capture market share and could change cash flow for a processor, but the vendor and processor probably would maintain an ongoing relationship, Oglesby says.
Salt Lake City-based Panoptic has been providing PCI-compliance services for about three years but all along had planned to sell a complete compliance package when the market was ready, Norris says.
The time has come to sell the software as companies tire of “being tied to a compliance vendor,” and Panoptic sees processors as the likely purchasers, she says.
“Processors are becoming the stewards of PCI,” Norris contends. “They’re held hostage at $5 a month for each merchant.”
If a Panoptic team and a processor’s technical team “sit in a room” and concentrate on setting up the system, they can do it in three to four weeks, she says, adding that Panoptic personnel came from technology companies, not security companies.
Despite offering the complete product, Panoptic will continue to provide PCI-compliance services to processors and ISOs, Norris says.
The company has just begun offering complete packages and had not yet sold any as of May 12.
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