This series covers the framework governing the self-regulated payment processing industry. Compliance with these standards is critical. You probably don’t need to be sold on the importance of securing financial information, particularly credit card information. There have been several high-profile data breaches of credit card information in recent years with the most prominent being the theft of more than 40 million numbers of Target’s customer data. The payment card industry is a self-regulated industry and as such, the burden of defining and enforcing data security standards falls upon its members. The data security guidelines for the payment card industry are governed by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards or PCI DSS.