CITGO Petroleum Corp. is now offering Heartland Payment Systems’ SmartLink network services to its marketers and retailers at nearly 6,500 CITGO-branded gas stations in the U.S. SmartLink technology consolidates multiple in-store devices onto one high-speed broadband line, enabling business owners to lower telecommunication costs, save time and resources and manage their businesses more efficiently. “Since…

Aloha Petroleum, an independently-owned retail gasoline marketer and convenient store operator in Hawaii, has added SonicWALL’s advanced line of network security and data protection solutions. “We needed a state-of-the-art security infrastructure that can be centrally managed to eliminate intruders from accessing our networks or crossing the gateways,” said Dwight Mascowe, IT support specialist at Aloha…

A baker puts two muffins in an oven. The first muffin turns to the other and says, “Boy it’s hot in here.” The second muffin screams, “Yikes, a talking muffin.” Hopefully convenience store chains are not nearly this surprised when it comes to this month’s PCI deadlines. However, at the NACStech conference in April, several…

When he thinks of PCI compliance, Ed Freels, director of information systems for Honey Farms Inc. recalls an old t-shirt slogan from the 1970s, “It showed the AC130 gun ship from the Vietnam era and it said, ‘You can run, but you’ll just die tired,’ and PCI compliance is no different. The most dangerous merchant…

Merchant Levels are designated by the PCI Standard as follows: Level 1: Any merchant, regardless of acceptance channel, processing over 6 million Visa transactions per year; that has suffered a hack or an attack that resulted in an account data compromise; that Visa, at its sole discretion, determines should meet the Level 1 merchant requirements…