For online merchants, especially those that run small businesses, the practice of optimizing your site to be Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliant can be headache-inducing.

So, it only adds to the problem with a site owner trys to configure and manage his or her firewall in-house, a practice in which the simplest mistake can result in misconfigured security systems, unnecessary data exposure and increases the risk of your site not meating PCI Data Security Standards (DSS).

But like everything on the Web, there's a solution for that, if you know where to look. In this case, it's ControlScan, the Web's "leading provider of PCI compliance and security solutions designed for small merchants." The company recently added ProTect Network Firewall to its ProTect Managed Security Services suite of solutions.

ProTect Network Firewall will help website owners by managing the installation, administration and monitoring of network firewalls. Best of all, the new offering was built specifically with Level 4 merchants in mind. (For the record, Level 4 merchants are those that have fewer than 20,000 Visa e-commerce transactions a year, all the way up to one million. In other words, the smallest of small businesses.)

Using ProTect Network Firewall from ControlScan will let small business owners rest easily knowing their receiving 24/7 continuous network monitoring and protection from outside threats, and all at an affordable price. The offering will improve a business' overall security posture, ensure that all updates/upgrades are made in a timely manner in accordacne with PCI standards and report on how and by whom a network is used, thus increasing Internet productivity.

Plus, it will help simplify network segmentation, enabling a single network segment to communicate with the payment processor. This act that helps smaller merchants by reducing the scope of PCI compliance and allows merchants to offer customer benefits without potentially exposing cardholder data to theft.