What You Will Need to Know About TLS 1.2 and SHA-2 Security Requirements
As of January 2018, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has mandated that all merchants and their clients have to be updated to TLS 1.2 and SHA-2 encryption standards to accept and process credit cards. Failure to switch won't result in a reversal of reliability, but it will lead to a complete disruption of service. Who's the NIST? The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is encharged by the U.S. government to create, set and enforce Internet security protocols. When security protocols are updated or created by the NIST, they are adopted by government institutions and then followed by public companies. What's TLS 1.2 and SHA-2? Transport Layer Security (TLS) and the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) are the principal tools and protocols for encryption security. The industry standard from 1999 to 2017 has been TLS 1 and SHA-1. In this time period, every merchant service provider had to provide services and products up to TLS 1 and SHA-1 c...