Back it Up, Baby

We have all been there. In college, we lost the killer ending of our thesis. At work, we could not find our quarterly results. And right now, we are sure that we went on vacation in 2016, but we cannot remember where – because that was several phones ago. Fortunately, due to the miracle of autosaves, cloud storage, and more, such data loss happens less often than it used to.

Our thoughts are with all citizens of Ukraine as they endure unprovoked military aggression from the Russian Federation. We are working around the clock to ensure the safety of our team members, partners, and customers impacted by the current geopolitical environment. We are actively assisting in the safe relocation of our employees and their families.

VGS is a Forbes 2021 Next Billion-Dollar Startup – WOAH! We’re thrilled to be one of only 25 companies selected for this distinction by Forbes and TrueBridge Capital Partners.

We are excited to announce two new extraordinary additions to our C-suite team at VGS. Reena Choudhry has joined us as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) along with Matt Amundson, our new Chief Marketing Officer (CMO).

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.

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.

Stilt launched their new product 80% quicker than they could have without VGS, and achieved PCI Level 2 compliance in just 1 week.

Very Good Security customer Flutterwave recently shared some excellent news! They raised $170 million in a recent Series C round, led by U.S. hedge fund and investment firm Tiger Global and New York-based private investment firm Avenir Growth Capital.

Very Good Security customer Stilt just made an exciting announcement. The rising fintech company, which offers financial services tailored to immigrants living in the US, just raised a $100 million debt facility from Silicon Valley Bank.

We’re just a few weeks into the new year and let’s be honest - it doesn’t feel all that different than 2020. That said, vaccines are being rolled out and we’re all hopeful we’ll see an end to the pandemic this year. However, some of the radical changes it brought with it are likely here to stay.

We’re thrilled to announce that Very Good Security (VGS) has scored the 28th spot on Growjo’s 100 Fastest Growing Companies in San Francisco 2020. It has been an exciting and rewarding journey for everyone on the VGS team, and we can’t wait to achieve even more growth and innovation in 2021!

It’s been said that necessity is the mother of invention, and that proverb certainly rings true for Very Good Security (VGS). The inspiration for VGS came from a problem my co-founder and I lived first-hand while building a large payments company: we spent nearly a year and $1 million to create the necessary infrastructure and compliance certifications to run our previous fintech business.

CB Insights today named VGS to the third annual Fintech 250, a prestigious list of emerging private companies working on groundbreaking financial technology.

Peter Berg is the VP of business development and strategy for Very Good Security (VGS). Peter joined VGS from Visa, where he created and led Visa Ventures, their global venture investment arm responsible for investments in early-stage payment and technology companies including Stripe, Marqeta, Klarna, Chain and more.

Before leading Visa Ventures, Peter helped shape Visa’s product strategy in new and emerging payments, and lead Visa’s relationship with Square. Prior to Visa, Peter was a co-founder or early employee of several successful startups in financial services and technology; two were acquired and one remains privately held today.

Three years ago, Very Good Security (VGS) embarked on a mission to prove a novel concept in the data security landscape: the best way to protect sensitive data is to not possess it in the first place. Since 2016, we have enabled our customers to adopt a “Zero Data” approach to de-scope their systems from interacting with sensitive data, while allowing them to maximize data utility and quickly achieve compliance certifications.

Very Good Security is excited to announce its official membership in the American Chamber of Commerce (ACC) in Ukraine. The ACC in Kyiv is a non-governmental, member-funded, non-profit organization representing the largest investors and multinationals that operate inside Ukraine.

No one starts a business to get audited, but today, any company that comes in contact with sensitive data (like payment cards, health information, or personally identifiable info), is forced to do expensive, time-consuming work that is not core to their business so that they can achieve certifications like PCI, SOC2, HIPAA and more, just to stay in business.

What if companies didn’t actually have to deal directly with sensitive data? What if they could interact with sensitive data, exchange it, and use it to meet their business objectives, without having to actually possess the data themselves, thereby staying out of compliance scope?

Very Good Security CEO and co-founder Mahmoud Abdelkader took to the stage at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on November 8, 2018 to present at the annual SINET Showcase. Each year the Security Innovation Network (SINET) evaluates the technologies and products of hundreds of emerging cybersecurity companies from around the world and selects the 16 most innovative and compelling companies. The winners are then invited to outline their company’s unique approach to addressing the most pressing needs and requirements in cybersecurity.

No one goes into business because they want to do data security. But whether you’re a brand-new startup or a Fortune 500 giant, effective data security is essential to be – and stay – in business. The only thing less fun than data security and compliance is a data breach.

If you’re anything like us, you’re tired of hearing about data breaches, and you’re tired of them happening, over and over, at the expense of your own privacy and security.