Blog

As we brought Payment Optimization to market, we regularly asked ourselves the all-important Why: Why this? Why now?

The short answer is that with the decade of evolution ecommerce has experienced in the last 18 months, firms have rushed to grow their payments functionality and now have the opportunity to tailor that payments ecosystem in innovative ways.

Our #1 most requested integration is live, and you can now link your Slack account to VGS Control.

With the new Slack integration, you can automatically collect and import public Slack channel messages to use for audit evidence when undergoing your SOC 2, ISO or similar assessment.

At VGS, we often get asked by prospective customers about the true costs of PCI. We’ve written about this topic before in broad strokes. Ultimately, the potential costs of PCI non-compliance are catastrophic, both financially and reputationally. But those big numbers can be scary and seem unreal. So let’s put a good summertime analogy to work in explaining how costs arise for two different market players - a small merchant and a SaaS platform with integrated payments.

The Challenge of Ransomware

The threat from ransomware, a type of malware that encrypts your files and holds them hostage for purposes of extortion, is currently rising. In 2020, there were 65,000 ransomware attacks reported in the United States. In the summer of 2021, two major ransomware attacks were even called threats to national security. Colonial Pipeline paid $5 Million in ransom after hackers successfully shut down part of its East Coast operations. JBS paid $11 million in ransom as cybercriminals disrupted its food supply operations to restaurants, grocery stores, and farmers.

VGS + WAF = <3

“VGS + Web Application Firewall: Part 1” discussed the need for enterprises to invest in a Web Application Firewall, or WAF, as part of a defense-in-depth security strategy. This follow-up blog explores where to position your WAF, specifically in relation to your VGS proxy, so it can best protect your applications and enterprise. The goal is to educate and empower you to secure your systems against the widest possible array of vulnerabilities and attacks.

Many organizations view SOC 2 audits as a necessary cost of doing business. But the audits actually serve as a competitive differentiator and as a way to strengthen relationships with customers and partners — by demonstrating just how seriously an organization takes security and compliance in order to protect sensitive data. This blog highlights the main areas auditors examine when performing SOC 2 assessments to determine an organization’s state of compliance. The blog also presents ways organizations can prepare for what auditors want to see — technically, operationally, and culturally.

Today, web applications, or “web apps” for short, dominate the business landscape. They gather, store, and process the sensitive personal and financial data of millions of Internet users. We now spend the majority of our computing time in the cloud, accessing online services and resources, from e-mail to e-commerce, via our browser.

VGS congratulates four of our customers, Aspiration, Brex, Gemini, and TrueBill, that made the Forbes' Fintech 50 2021 list of most innovative fintech companies.

Making this prestigious list is no easy feat and puts organizations in the company of notable 'graduates' (aka those who have gone public) like Coinbase and Affirm. We’re not at all surprised to see these four listed, with their focus on innovation extending all the way to security and compliance.

Quo Finance is a mobile subscription app that helps you easily set and achieve your lifestyle and financial goals. CEO Tucker Haas recently sat down with us to discuss the critical role data security plays in their product and why they decided outsourcing would keep customer data safest.

Note: The following has been edited for length and clarity. You can see the full discussion here.

Today, we are excited to announce our participation in Visa Fintech Partner Connect, a program designed to help Visa’s issuing clients quickly connect with a vetted and curated set of technology providers.

Now more than ever, cardholders expect best-in-class experiences from their issuers. Concurrently, issuers have evolved in recent years from exclusively traditional banks with brick and mortar branches to everything from food delivery platforms to crypto exchanges. Couple heightened cardholder expectations and the expanded issuer category with digital acceleration driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, and you have meaningful tailwinds resulting in more personalized and nimble card products.