An owner of a new restaurant likely would not hesitate to buy a $300 fire extinguisher to comply with local fire codes, but he might put off spending about half that much to ensure compliance with standards designed to protect customers’ credit card data, a new report suggests.

Doug Klotina, executive vice president of payment services and channel partners at Trustwave, a Chicago-based data-security and compliance-service provider, makes that analogy in summing up the key...