PCI stands for Payment Card Industry, PCI security standards serve mainly to ensure cardholder information is maintained in a secure environment. Therefore, any merchant that accepts credit card payments, or any business or individual who handles cardholder data, must comply with PCI standards. Compromised data can badly affect customers, retailers, and financial institutions. One PCI problem is enough to impact a business’s trustworthiness.
The steps to stay PCI standards-compliant:
1. Continuous monitoring of firewalls, intrusion detection systems, antivirus and spyware updates.
2. Ensuring that security control failures are detected and fixed immediately.
3. Building and maintaining a secure network to transmit card holder data.
4. Yearly review of the hardware and software technology used.

Source: www.specialtyansweringservice.net