nuBridges PCI Secure(TM) Helps Penn Foster Comply With PCI Data Security Standard

Market Wire, November, 2007

nuBridges, the secure eBusiness authority, announced today that Penn Foster Career School is protecting confidential student information and helping the country's largest accredited school of independent home study comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Founded 117 years ago, Scranton, Penn.-based Penn Foster is one of the oldest and largest distance learning institutions in the world, providing programs and services designed to meet the lifelong learning needs of the adult learner from high school diplomas to career-specific diplomas and associate degrees. For its first 110 years in business, the school handled all of its correspondence and transactions by mail.

Beginning in 2003, Penn Foster started accepting online enrollment and began developing plans to secure all of its customer data from student information to banking and payment transactions. Initial protection was limited to encrypting data in transit using standard web hosting encryption tools, and restricting employee access to data at rest on an enterprise server.

With the advent of the PCI DSS, the school began its search for a solution that would make compliance straightforward. "We looked at multiple vendors with solutions across the board, including encryption toolkits, encryption appliances and multi-platform software, before choosing nuBridges PCI Secure™," said Rob Bruno, CTO for Penn Foster. "We chose nuBridges PCI Secure for a couple of reasons. First, the application provided numerous useful features that we found to be very intuitive. Second, we could leverage the other nuBridges managed file transfer modules that we were already using to help us reduce transaction costs with all of our financial institution partners. nuBridges is our single-vendor source for a broad range of secure e-business solutions, which is a true value-add for us."

Today, Penn Foster manages thousands of student transactions daily using nuBridges PCI Secure. In addition to encrypting credit card and student information, the application also provides other benefits. "PCI Secure's logging capability gives me visibility I never had before," said Bruno. "Now I can see exactly who accesses student data, and can restrict access as necessary to further tighten security. The logging capability also makes it easy to prepare for PCI DSS audits. I can run a report that shows who decrypted protected data and when, which makes the auditing process much smoother."

Penn Foster also takes advantage of nuBridges PCI Secure key management system. "We use the unified key management system to manage all of the encryption keys," said Bruno. "With just one place to go, our administrators can keep track of when keys are expiring and create new keys with little effort."

Bruno also says that PCI Secure's APIs are very straightforward, which makes it easy to train new developers on it. In the near future, there are plans to apply PCI Secure's encryption capability to protect sensitive company data, such as payroll and salary information.

"nuBridges PCI Secure is our insurance plan that will prevent a potentially devastating security breach that would be costly in terms of both fines and student trust," said Bruno.

About nuBridges PCI Secure

nuBridges PCI Secure provides the practical answer to payment card industry (PCI) data security compliance, protecting retailers and services companies from operational disruption and the risk of penalties when sensitive business information is breached.

About nuBridges, LLC

Atlanta-based nuBridges, Inc. is the secure eBusiness authority. Thousands of companies worldwide use nuBridges software and services to connect electronically with business partners, protect information in transit and at rest, and comply with legislative and industry mandates for data security. nuBridges technology drives B2B transactions worth $884 billion every year. For more information on nuBridges, visit www.nubridges.com .

Marcy Theobald Carabiner Communications 678-860-3639 Email Contact