Our Zero Data Hero Customer Spotlight series highlights the stories of VGS customers who have joined our Zero Data mission to protect the world’s information.
Today’s Zero Data Hero is Nathan Seither, VP of Engineering at CoverHound and CyberPolicy
Q - Tell us about CoverHound?
Nathan - CoverHound is a digital insurance agency. We help consumers and businesses navigate the world of insurance. Finding the right coverage can be really hard if you're not an insurance expert. We use our insurance expertise and extensive carrier connections to help our clients purchase the policy that meets their needs.
Q - What does Zero Data mean to you?
Nathan - Zero Data means minimizing the customer data we hold on to and share with third parties, thereby minimizing what would be compromised in a potential breach.
Q - How has VGS helped CoverHound?
Nathan - VGS has helped us create an industry first simultaneous multi-carrier purchase process with only a single customer interaction, while still keeping client financial information from ever touching our servers.
Q - How do you see the relationship evolving over time?
Nathan - We would likely move more pieces of data into VGS, securely vaulting any pieces of sensitive data we don't need internally in the lifecycle of the application. Eventually, we may integrate VGS with our phone systems and de-scope our agency operations from PCI.
Q - How do you quantify the benefit of VGS?
Nathan - How does one quantify the difference in cost between certifying as SAQ-D or SAQ-A for PCI DSS? At a start, it's really that simple. VGS was the only provider we found that would let us vault arbitrary data without restrictions on how we could process it downstream. In our case, recertification with a QSA was going to cost us twice what VGS would cost in addition to requiring approximately 50% time from 3 senior team members for 3 months every year.
Q - Any advice for other startups who are beginning security and compliance journey?
Nathan - Critically evaluate what customer data you hold on to and whether you truly need it. There's some you'll need; that's fine. Classify it based on whether it's needed only for third parties (A), or if the data is important to how your application runs internally (B). Use VGS for A, and do whatever you can to minimize B.
Q - Who is your favorite superhero and why?
Nathan - Are we calling the Fast And Furious folks superheroes yet? If so, I would probably say Luke Hobbs because he cares about keeping people safe and he's a great dad to his daughter.
Q - How can people sign up with CoverHound?
Nathan - Go to coverhound.com and start shopping! You can quickly and easily comparison shop for auto, home, renters, commercial, and cyber insurance. No signup required!
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