how secure is secure?

The online registration company called RegOnline has recently announced that they are now Level 1 PCI compliant. So what does this mean to you or I? For me, I can respect that this company has taken their site a step further to guarantee the safety of their customers' credit card details, and I can certainly appreciate that. But I am a web developer and know a little about this type of stuff.

What does it mean to you? Honestly, probably very little. As much as I can appreciate that companies are taking these extra safety precautions with their customers' payment information, I doubt that the average web consumer is going to notice. It seems to me that many consumers don't even know yet to look for the little padlock icon to see if a page is secure, much less to research what level of security a site is offering when they place an order. And even if a consumer was concerned and knowledgeable enough to read what type of encryption a site uses, would they know enough to verify that what they read was accurate?

It seems to me that most users trust a site's security based on how they feel about that company - its brand, its popularity, whether it has a brick and mortar counterpart and whether they have shopped at it before. Sure, the phrase "your credit card purchase is secure" can be a consolation, but I think that at this point these words are more-or-less taken for granted.

Seeing as RegOnline is an event registration service for professionals, it is quite possible that their tech-savvy customers know enough to look for a string level of encryption before plugging in their credit card information and clicking that submit button.

I guess we should feel fortunate that many web developers are taking the high road when it comes to their customers' payment information, since customers seem to be, on the whole, unaware of the potential ramifications of ordering via an unsecure website. Sometimes the behind-the-scenes attention that companies pay to their customers, without their customers knowing, is what makes all the difference. Other sites that shirk their security options may quickly find their customers' information being compromised, and one of the best ways to lose a customer is to inadvertently make them vulnerable to fraud.