In meeting the PCI DSS, Firethorn reinforces its commitment to security and provides additional protection for consumers' sensitive credit and debit card account information in connection with each mobile banking session. It also allows Firethorn's financial institutions, wireless operator and merchant clients to offer enhanced mobile commerce options, such as contactless payments, and other point-of-sale transactions, such as gift cards and loyalty rewards.

"Our goal at Firethorn is to provide an easy, new way for consumers to use their mobile devices for payments and other mobile commerce transactions, and to enhance security by meeting or exceeding the toughest industry standards," said Tripp Rackley, president of Firethorn. "We have worked hard to make sure our solution provides a level of protection that exceeds our partners' and consumers' expectations. Firethorn's latest service upgrades enable our partners to enact a wide range of innovative mobile commerce implementations with the confidence that their sensitive information is protected by tested and accepted security measures."

Firethorn's methods to protect customer data include encryption of account information at rest and in transit, consistent monitoring for malicious activity, and providing security awareness training for all support staff. The Company also conducts regular security assessments of its mobile services to verify that security measures are working appropriately. Firethorn met numerous PCI DSS requirements by relocating its mobile services operation to a protected data center that provides 24/7 support for all Firethorn services.

The PCI DSS is a set of comprehensive requirements for enhancing payment account data security, addressing policies, procedures, network architecture, software design and other critical measures to protect customer account data proactively. It was developed by the founding payment brands of the PCI Security Standards Council(TM), which includes some of the world's leading credit and financial services firms, to help facilitate the broad adoption of consistent data security measures on a global basis.