MIDDLETOWN, R.I. -- Warren Rogers, a provider of precision fuel monitoring to convenience stores and other fuel retailers, recently announced the availability of its PCI-compliant, cloud-based fuel monitoring system.
The system has built-in, multilayered and redundant security measures and helps expedite payment-card-industry (PCI) acceptance from corporate compliance and information technology (IT) departments.
Integral to the system is the Warren Rogers on-site processor (OSP), a network appliance that is installed at each fuel retailer’s location. The OSP collects fuel data from a variety of on-site peripherals. The raw data is securely transmitted in real time to Warren Rogers’ highly scalable and redundant cloud infrastructure. Once that is received, Warren Rogers performs statistical analysis and generates comprehensive reports that can be distributed to a variety of endpoint systems. All phases of the Warren Rogers data collection processes, including the collection, storage and transmission of sensitive customer information, meet and exceed current compliance regulations enforced by the PCI Security Standards Council.
The Warren Rogers OSP, which has an outgoing connection only, requires a single encrypted channel to perform data transmission. As a result, there are no holes in the retailer’s firewall that would require burdensome oversight by their IT staff, the company said. In addition, Warren Rogers does not require customer virtual private network (VPN) access to perform fuel and security compliance maintenance. Instead, it uses a proprietary management system to perform all maintenance operations, reducing customer IT overhead.
Warren Rogers assures clients that the data collected and transmitted only contains the minimum amount of corporate information that is needed for data processing operations and does not contain customer cardholder data.
“Our clients are concerned with protecting their customer’s credit-card information and satisfying strict payment card industry standards,” said Bill Jones, president and CEO of Warren Rogers. “In some notable instances, security breaches have been tied to a third party having access to a company’s virtual private network. When a third party has access to the VPN, it can leave a retailer vulnerable to hacks and malware. Providing such access to the VPN makes compliance and IT staff uneasy, and we’ve found that a growing number of larger corporations are beginning to lock down vendor applications requiring VPN access.”
Warren Rogers has invested in cryptography with multiple layers of security and redundancies built in and has taken the VPN completely out of the equation. “This enables our customers to gain quicker approvals from their IT and compliance departments,” he said. “An acceptance process that used to take nearly nine months can now take a few weeks. Our customers also like that our system is simple to install, integrate and scale.”
The system also reduces IT administrative time and overhead costs. “Since the system, including the OSP, is entirely managed by our team, this removes the burden for maintenance from IT staff,” said Jones. “No manual software upgrades to the OSP are required. And since it’s is cloud-based, it’s essentially a plug-and-play solution that’s designed to meet compliance standards now and well into the future.”
Founded in 1979 by Dr. Warren Rogers, Warren Rogers Associates pioneered the development of Statistical Inventory Reconciliation Analysis (SIRA) as a means of monitoring underground fuel tanks and associated lines. SIRA was certified in accordance with U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requirements and has been used by petroleum marketers for more than 25 years to provide UST (underground storage tank) leak detection compliance. Warren Rogers also invented Continual Inventory Reconciliation Analysis (CIRA) for fuel management, the company said.
Middletown, R.I.-based Warren Rogers specializes in statistical analysis and precision fuel system diagnostics for the retail petroleum industry and develops innovative ways to identify and combat fuel loss. Warren Rogers holds U.S., European and Canadian patents for these applications. Most recently, the company received a patent for its equipment and methodology that can detect and alert customers to a line leak or fuel theft while a pressurized piping system is in flow.
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