Innovation and regulation are the ying and yang of financial technology in many respects. To this end, we caught up with Justin Beals, co-founder and CEO of Strike Graph, to talk about the relationship between fintech innovation and fintech regulation, and why compliance is something that successful fintechs are taking seriously.
Founded in 2020 and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Strike Graph specializes in helping companies secure critical security compliance certifications. These are the certifications that can both impact revenue and reduce the time to close, as well as demonstrate the maturity of an organization.
Why banks and financial services companies need a compliance partner.
The challenge (for banks) is that the standards that you’re trying to meet can be complex. It’s important to not only have technology, but (also) a provider of that technology with intelligence about how to meet the standard so that you don’t essentially spin your wheels trying to do things that don’t necessarily make you more secure and don’t necessarily impact compliance.
So when revenue is on the line – and that’s what the challenge is here – being unable to represent a security posture that meets certain standards (means) you might not get that partnership, you might not get that contract … You really need to do it efficiently and effectively and be able to maintain it for a long period of time.
On the role an effective compliance partner can play to help financial services companies
I think one of the secrets about compliance practices is that if there’s some aspect of your business that isn’t applicable to the standard, you’re actually not required to be assessed to it. And so what’s really important is to customize your security posture according to the types of risk that your business is meeting in the marketplace, and then respond to those risks. Then, (you are) able to talk to the assessor and say, “hey, look, you know we don’t necessarily have this particular risk. It’s not something we solve for and therefore it’s not something we need to be assessed for.” That way you get through the compliance process as efficiently as possible.
On Strike Graph’s approach to helping financial services companies meet compliance obligations
The secret sauce at Strike Graph is that we have a very intelligent SaaS platform that helps our customers customize that particular security posture based upon the risks that are impacting their business.
This is impacting any B2B company that’s sharing data. And that’s really how we describe our marketplace. And, of course, fintech handles some of the most precious transactions and pieces of data, and they have a long history of things like PCI DSS where compliance is really important. So they really do understand the value of having a good compliance practice.
Check out the rest of our interview on FinovateTV.