daverose Posted February 18, 2004 Posted February 18, 2004 Hi, I am planning to purchase an SSL certificate for my company to begin selling goods via our Web site. However, contrary to common practice, our office manager will be manually keying in the customer's payment info into our credit card terminal rather than this happening automatically. The current plan is to secure the online store with SSL and send half of the customer's credit card number to us by e-mail and drop the other half into a database. This way, if either our e-mail server or TCH's databases were compromised, the customer would most likely still be safe. Is there an equivalent of SSL available for the database itself to provide extra security for the customer's saved information (address, phone, 1/2 of CC#, etc.)? Is it even necessary? Thanks!!! Dave apologies for the crosspost Quote
surefire Posted February 18, 2004 Posted February 18, 2004 However, contrary to common practice, our office manager will be manually keying in the customer's payment info into our credit card terminal rather than this happening automatically. This isn't the best procedure IMHO. You should let the processing company worry about storing the credit card/client data. But that's not what you asked. There is no SSL-ish protection available that I know of. You can encrypt the data in your database. There are a million and one encryption procedures and you can choose one or two that suit your needs. The encryption can be done automatically. This adds another layer of security... and a good one, but nothing is foolproof. If you have a secret to keep, don't put it online, even in a database. You have to evaluate the risk/reward. I lock my doors and turn on the alarm when I go out of town, but I know that a world class thief could still get in. Quote
daverose Posted February 19, 2004 Author Posted February 19, 2004 This isn't the best procedure IMHO. You should let the processing company worry about storing the credit card/client data. But that's not what you asked. Thank you Jack. I agree this is not a good way to go about it. The problem is that I work at a large university that is a bit slow in technology, meaning if we want to advance we need to do it on our own but within the framework they'll allow us.... I appreciate the advice; I'll look into options. Dave Quote
MikeJ Posted February 19, 2004 Posted February 19, 2004 The current plan is to secure the online store with SSL and send half of the customer's credit card number to us by e-mail and drop the other half into a database. This way, if either our e-mail server or TCH's databases were compromised, the customer would most likely still be safe. Even sending half of a customers information via email is risky. Email is probably one of the least secure methods of transmitting information. It's almost equivalent to sending a postcard through the postal system. Anyone who handles it, or sees it on it's way, can easily read it's contents. I would recommend looking at some way to encrypt the contents if you can since you control the sending and the receiving ends (so can control all the keys). Is there an equivalent of SSL available for the database itself to provide extra security for the customer's saved information (address, phone, 1/2 of CC#, etc.)? Is it even necessary? I'm not so certain about encrypted connections to the database, in most cases it's not really necessary unless you are making connections to that database over a public line (like the internet). If you are connecting to the database from the same machine it's on, then your exposure is minimal. There are ways to encrypt fields in a database. However, I'm not a database guru or a real developer to tell you exactly how to do that off the top of my head. But it may be one area to look into. The best way, by far, though, in my opinion, is if your intent is strictly to capture credit card information in order to process an order, and then you don't have any intent of reusing that information, then don't store it at all. There are ways to accept credit card information, pass it on to payment processers, and get a response code for that transaction, and then store that. I know on at least some payment processors you can even get a code back that can be used for automatic repeat billing against that customers credit card without you having to store the credit card information. This would greatly reduce your liability, because that code used to do repeat billing cannot be used in any other transaction (so if someone else got ahold of it, it would be useless to them). Keep in mind, that according to California law now, if your system is compromised (hacked) or you believe it has been compromised, and some of your customers are residents of California, you are required to contact them, or publically announce, that their personal information may have been stolen. Besides the liability issues, that might be some more weight to put on the powers that be to convince them to "get with the times." Quote
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