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.
Q - Tell us about Seekom?
Amit- We provide online hotel management SaaS platform, and our solutions are already in 24 countries. Any hotel can use our IBEX hotel management product and we support website booking screens, inbound sales channel management and much more.
Everything is integrated into this all-in-one system, which supports credit card payments as well. In fact, we process over a million bookings a month, and that’s why VGS has been so helpful - there’s so much credit card data coming in that we had to get a professional to help us handle it.
Q - How did Seekom approach the challenge of data security?
Amit- Before finding VGS, we used a DIY approach. We managed data security ourselves, building a vault, tokenizing all credit card data and performing self-certification for PCI compliance. But, __being self-managed, it started to become really risky to do it on our own - especially with new privacy acts like the GDPR coming out. __
When we started looking for companies that can handle data security for us, we found VGS and realized that you guys can handle all our PCI compliance needs so that we don’t need to worry about sensitive data breaches at all.
Q - What does Zero Data mean to you?
To me, the idea behind Zero Data is all about not duplicating a reliable data security product. VGS is a solution that can provide PCI compliance and data security for us without processing any sensitive data ourselves - so why should we waste our resources developing the same product that VGS already provides?
Q - How has VGS helped Seekom?
Amit- VGS has helped us in a mostly technical manner. Doing PCI ourselves used to take a lot of time, but that technical work has all been shifted to VGS. Now, we don’t need to worry about PCI. We can focus on our product rather than dedicating time and resources to data security. It’s made our product development process faster, and freed us from worrying about PCI compliance.
Q - How do you quantify the benefit of VGS?
Amit- The benefits of partnering with VGS can be measured in terms of resources, human capital and technical expertise. If you’re working with VGS to handle all your data security, you don’t need any of those things. Rather than anyone on our team managing our vault or PCI compliance, our focus goes towards more important endeavors. Resource management-wise, it’s good to have VGS.
Q - How do you see the relationship evolving over time?
Amit- Right now, we’re using the aliasing features of VGS to process credit card data. But, there are other solutions that VGS provides that we can use in the future. When our mobile app launches, for example, we can use the ID verification feature in which users capture an image of their ID or passport data using their mobile device.
With VGS, that sensitive data is aliased - so we don’t need to worry about data privacy or staying GDPR compliant. You guys stay on your toes, so we don’t need to take care of it.
Q - Any advice for other startups who are beginning security and compliance journey?
If you’re a startup, you should go to a third-party for your data security from day one. Don’t do it yourself, as we did previously - it’s too time-consuming and not worth your time. Focus on your product and let VGS handle PCI.
Q - Who is your favorite superhero and why?
Amit- I would say Ironman, because he doesn’t have any God-given superhero powers. He basically created his superhero power himself, and that’s what I think people can really do. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have anything in the beginning. You can create something out of nothing for yourself, and become a superhero. And that’s why I admire him - it’s all technological stuff, it’s all in his brain.
Q - How can people sign up with Seekom?
Amit- If you go to our website, you can sign up for a free Ibex demo. Feel free to test it out and we will get in touch with you shortly.
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