Saratoga Springs, NY (PRWEB) May 6, 2008 -- Mountain Media; announced today that it has been granted level 1 Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standards (DSS) certification, making it one of only a handful of hosted shopping cart solutions and payment gateway providers to achieve such distinguished status.

The PCI Standard is the result of collaboration between the five major credit card companies (Visa International, MasterCard Worldwide, American Express, Discover Financial Services and JCB) to develop a single approach to safeguarding sensitive data, prevent credit card fraud, hacking and various other security issues. The standards define a series of best practices for handling, transmitting and storing sensitive data. Currently, any merchant, organization or software that processes, stores or disseminates credit card data must be PCI DSS compliant or they risk hefty fines and/or losing the ability to process credit cards altogether thus putting their entire business in jeopardy.

Mountain Media's level 1 compliant processes and products allow them to provide online merchants with a safe and reliable solution that helps to satisfy the trust factor that is required to turn an online visitor into an online shopper. A recent article published by Internet Retailer Magazine noted that shopping carts are often the culprit in card data thefts at eCommerce sites, making it all the more important for online merchants to select compliant eCommerce and payment gateway providers.

Dean Massiah of Fortrex Technologies, Inc., a PCI SSC authorized Qualified Security Assessor Company (QSAC) for performing PCI compliance audits says, Online merchants put their businesses at great risk if due diligence is not practiced and steps are not taken to protect their customers' cardholder data. It is key that merchants align themselves with solution providers like Mountain Media that are not only compliant with the PCI DSS standard but take operational risk management seriously.

We're both excited and proud to have achieved this major milestone, said Scott Fultz, Mountain Media's President and CTO. Security has always been at the forefront of the technologies that we build here and we hope to educate the online merchant community about how vital it is for them to choose a PCI Compliant provider when making a decision about their shopping cart solution. Otherwise, they could be entrusting a company whose core competency may be marketing or graphic design with their customers' personal and financial data. Just one publicized security breach may be all it takes to put [even an established] online merchant out of business!

Mountain Media provides search-engine friendly; eCommerce products and services that allow serious online retailers to easily achieve natural search-engine rankings and capture increased sales.

The company's proprietary eCommerce management platform, known as Mountain Commerce offers online merchants a secure, now PCI DSS certified, environment which helps merchants receive top search-engine visibility while providing powerful up-selling and cross-selling features, order management and fulfillment, pricing and promotions handling, payment processing and catalog management. The system is an all-in-one eCommerce solution, and includes individualized, template-free graphic designs with each implementation. Additionally, the company offers a full compliment of commercial Web services and custom application development to accommodate the most complex eCommerce projects.