Coast Professional, Inc. Achieves PCI DSS Compliance

Chicago – Tech Lock announces Coast Professional Inc.’s (Coast) achievement in becoming a level 1 PCI DSS merchant. Tech Lock is a PCI DSS QSA and ASV that is certified to provide level 1 PCI DSS assessments for clients who are looking to have an external 3rd party validation off PCI DSS compliance.

PCI DSS requires businesses that store, process or transmit credit card data to follow the PCI DSS standard, and should have become PCI compliant by the end of 2007. Non-compliance with PCI DSS is high risk to losing sensitive cardholder data, which will most likely result in PCI DSS fines, legal action and bad publicity. Organizations that fail to comply face fines of up to $500,000 if the data is lost or stolen and risk not being allowed to handle cardholder data.

“After achieving our FISMA compliance for the Department of Education in 2009, one of our primary goals for 2010 was to obtain our PCI DSS compliance,” says Brian Davis, Coast’s chief executive officer. “Credit card transactions represent a large percentage of our payments from debtors and we wanted to ensure that we were properly protecting and storing the card holder information to meet the compliance requirements of the PCI standard. To ensure we were interpreting the controls within PCI DSS correctly, we wanted to work with a company who was a PCI qualified security assessor and who had the ARM industry experience and business knowledge to help guide us to compliance.”

“Almost every ARM company processes, stores or transmits card holder data and thus is subject to PCI DSS,” says Michael Wright, Tech Lock’s chief security officer. “To achieve PCI DSS compliance organizations are evaluated on over 230 technical, process and procedural controls. Through Coast’s achievement in becoming PCI DSS compliant, they continue to show why they are an industry leader in regards to their stance on the protection of consumer information.”

ABOUT COAST PROFESSIONAL
Established in the early 1970s, Coast Professional focuses solely in the recovery of educational receivables — a specialty it has pursued to the exclusion of other kinds of collections work. Coast Professional’s clients are lending institutions, education institutions and government agencies that need to recover student loans in default. Coast Professional is one of five firms nationwide who have won a “small business” contract with the federal government, whereby the firm is provided with a limited list of individuals from whom it may attempt to negotiate loan settlements.

ABOUT TECH LOCK INC
Tech Lock, Inc. is focused on serving the ARM industry, including credit grantors, collection agencies, debt buyers, service organizations, healthcare providers and more. Its IT professionals all possess Fortune 100 and ARM industry experience. This makes Tech Lock uniquely skilled in serving the ARM industry as it relates to information technology, data security and regulatory compliance. Tech Lock is a service disabled veteran owned small business, For more information, visit www.techlockinc.com.