ACH for electronic checks processing

We currently use ACH for doing Payroll direct deposit. Our Accounting
office would like to start using ACH for paying AP vendors and as a way
to let students (aka parents) pay on-line tuition bills. We currently
only do online payment by credit card. We want to start collecting bank
routing and checking account numbers and doing a debit to that account
for payments via ACH.  Does anyone have and do's and don'ts or things to
watch out for? Are there any IT regulations that need to be followed
when collecting checking account information over the web like there is
for credit cards? (e.g. encrypting card numbers, data retention, SSL,
etc)