Why This Question Does Not Apply to Most Dental Practice Websites

The question below is commonly asked in industries where websites directly process payments:

“98.5% of merchants are susceptible to script attacks. Do you have monitoring in place for your payment page scripts to protect against such attacks?”

For most dental practice websites, this question is not applicable, because the website itself does not process payments.


How Payment Processing Works on Dental Websites

Dental practice websites are typically designed so that:

  • Patients are redirected to a secure third-party payment platform, or

  • A payment window is loaded that is owned and controlled by the payment processor

In both cases:

  • Credit card data is never handled, stored, or processed by the dental website

  • The practice website does not run or manage payment scripts

  • The website has no access to sensitive payment information

This approach is standard and intentional for security and compliance reasons.


Where Payment Security Responsibility Lives

When a third-party payment processor is used:

  • Script monitoring

  • Fraud detection

  • Encryption

  • PCI compliance

  • Breach monitoring and response

Are all handled by the payment processor, not the dental website.

This is why payment processors exist and why healthcare and financial industries rely on them.


Why Website-Level Script Monitoring Is Not Required

Script attack monitoring is relevant only when:

  • A website directly embeds and controls payment scripts, or

  • The website processes payments on its own servers

Since dental websites do not do this, there are no payment scripts on the site to monitor.

Requiring a marketing website to manage payment security would increase risk rather than reduce it.