PCI DSS or the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard is basically meant to safeguard cardholder data and yet around 67% of the PCI-regulated companies do not comply with these standards completely.

These key findings are from a survey conducted by Ponemon Institute and sponsored by Imperva who is the data security vendor.

There might be an image problem with the PCI. As per the study, PCI is viewed by half the security professionals as a burden and around 59% feel that it does not help them improve security. Added to this is the inaugural study conducted during 2009, where those respondents that said that they had ample resources to comply with the PCI dropped to 38% from 40%.

Added to this, Ponemon has also found that the data breach experienced by organizations in the recent past has increased from around 79% in 2009 to about 85% in 2011. Even the companies that had reported data breaches (around 2 to 5) in the last two years have also gone up from 30% to about 41%. Added to this at least 39% of all the breaches involved cardholder data.

According to the survey there was no evident correlation between the compliance levels and the PCI-related expenditures. Rob Rachwald, Director of security strategy, Imperva stated that these organizations that didn’t suffer data breaches were not the ones who spent the biggest budget.

Observing the results of the overall survey that has been conducted, Rachwald has stated that PCI has been effective in controlling breaches but there are many companies that don’t really believe that.