The deadline is July 1st 2010 for compliance with the new PCI regulations. By this date all level four merchants' websites must be run by PCI DSS web hosts which are compliant with PCI standards.

If you operate an e-commerce site then you must be prepared for this compliance deadline or you may be fined or dropped as a merchant by all the major credit card companies. This will apply whether your company stores customer's credit card details on a server or not.

In order to prepare for compliance you must first understand that all websites are given a merchant level, from one to four – PCI rules differ according to which level you are on. Level one websites have historically been the biggest concern to the PCI Security Council: To be on this level a company must process more than 6 million customer transactions a year.

At the other end of the spectrum are the small e-businesses who process less than 20,000 transactions per year and these companies are given a level four rating.

A level one merchant will have more compliance issues than a level four merchant – these types of companies may even have a full-time member of staff to act as PCI Compliance Officer. This is why most major online retailers have achieved compliance with the latest PCI regulations.

Smaller companies, at level four, will need to have servers scanned routinely throughout the year and they must adhere to regulations requiring regular updates of all virus detectors and firewalls. If the business does store information about customers, then this has to be placed on a server which is not linked to the internet, and have procedures in place so that only a limited number of people have access to it.