Arab Financial Services Company (AFS), the region’s leading provider of electronic-payments and consumer finance outsourcing services, hosted a seminar on Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) in Bahrain.

The event was held under the patronage of the Central Bank of Bahrain.

The chief guest at the seminar director, Inspection Directorate, Central Bank of Bahrain Khalil Jaffar Al Hamad opened the event and addressed the audience which included participants from 17 banks from Bahrain.

CEO, AFS, Shankar Sharma made the keynote address on the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard which covered an introduction to PCI DSS, the concepts and the history of the standard.

The PCI DSS requires merchants and service providers that store, process or transmit customer payment card data adhere to information security controls and processes that ensure data integrity.

The main speaker for the seminar was chief consultant, SISA Bahrain Dharshan Shanthamurthy who explained in detail the various requirements of the 12 domains on PCI DSS. Other speakers included Henri Schomper, vice-president and regional head Security and Risk Services, MasterCard Worldwide; Richard Trim, head of Vendor Compliance and Security, Risk Management, Visa CEMEA, and S Jawad Al Alawi, Network and Communication Manager, AFS.

“The team at AFS is happy to have organised this event under the patronage of the Central Bank of Bahrain. It was a useful and successful seminar with a great turnout from the banks. We encourage all banks to become PCI DSS compliant in the near future,” said Sharma.

“The effective security of data held by institutions is an area of increasing importance and concern for individuals and corporate bodies. Recent events have demonstrated the damage to the reputation of organisations which fail to retain the confidentiality of customer data,” said Al Hamd.

Currently, AFS is a participating organisation and is working with the council to evolve the PCI Data Security Standard (DSS) and other payment card data protection standards. – TradeArabia News Service