Last checked at 18 Oct 2010 07:00
18 October 2010
Eckoh plc
("Eckoh" or "the Company")
Eckoh achieves the highest accreditation with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard
Eckoh, the UK's leading developer of speech recognition solutions for customer contact centres, is pleased to announce the achievement of certification of full compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard ("PCI DSS" or "the standard"), which is a set of comprehensive requirements for enhancing account data security.
The PCI DSS is the payment card industry requirement for all organisations that store, process or transmit credit or debit cardholder data. It was developed by the founding payment brands of the PCI Security Standards Council, such as American Express, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa Inc., to facilitate the adoption of consistent data security measures on a global basis that ensure customer card information is managed securely through a complete and multifaceted array of security policies, practices and controls.
PCI DSS has 4 levels of attainment, each with different compliance validation procedures. Eckoh has achieved Level 1, which is the highest possible standard. To achieve this accreditation, Eckoh was required to conduct a thorough review of its access controls, infrastructure, software, security policies and procedures, and implement any necessary amendments to satisfy the compliance criteria. This was followed by a full and detailed external audit with a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA), who tested and confirmed compliance with all the requirements. Eckoh has invested over 2 years and 10,000 man hours to complete the process.
Eckoh is now fully accredited to offer solutions to process credit and debit card payments made over the telephone and web. This service helps mitigate the risk for Eckoh's clients by reducing or eliminating the handling of card data by contact centre agents. In addition, by providing a compliant service, Eckoh helps to satisfy its clients' PCI DSS requirements in a cost effective and efficient manner.
The Company's EckohPAY product, which can be implemented quickly and therefore at a lower overall cost, enables users to make real-time, secure and compliant phone and web card payments, and was designed specifically for the expected demand from PCI DSS. Clients already using EckohPAY include Ministry of Justice, Vue, Northern Ireland Electricity, Comic Relief, Utilita and Northumbrian Water.
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer of Eckoh, commented: "Our PCI DSS accreditation is the culmination of a long and onerous process. Its achievement represents a critical milestone in our strategy to aggressively grow our sales of card payment solutions and we are confident that it will facilitate Eckoh in winning new customers. We are already benefitting from higher demand as our client base in this market continues to grow and the potential implications of non-compliance with PCI DSS become more widely understood. The volume of card payments we are processing is increasing rapidly and is now at an annual run rate of £190 million, and this growth is set to continue. We look forward to increasing our value as a partner to our clients and enabling them to deliver a better service to their customers."
Ends
Enquiries
Eckoh plc
Nik Philpot, Chief Executive Officer
Adam Moloney, Group Finance Director
www.eckoh.com Tel: 01442 458 300
Corfin Public Relations
Harry Chathli, Claire Norbury Tel: 020 7596 2860
Seymour Pierce
Jonathan Wright, Jeremy Porter (Nominated Adviser) Tel: 020 7107 8000
Jacqui Briscoe (Corporate Broking)
Notes to Editors:
About Eckoh
Eckoh plc (AIM: ECK) is the UK's leading developer of speech recognition and IVR solutions for customer contact centres.
Eckoh's sophisticated technology enables routine enquiries, transactions or payments to be processed without the need for the consumer to actually talk to an agent. This significantly reduces its clients' operational costs, whilst freeing up agents to deal with more complex enquiries. Eckoh is the largest developer of such hosted services in the UK.
Eckoh's secure and resilient infrastructure has the scalability to handle over 650,000 calls an hour and up to 8,000 calls simultaneously, which means calls can always be answered no matter how unpredictable the circumstances.
For more information, visit: www.eckoh.com