How GeoIQ and SecureSlate Are Sprinting Toward Global Growth

Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Growing a tech company can be exciting but also hard. You always want to do new things and reach more people. GeoIQ was one of these companies. They are good at location intelligence.

This means their tech can find out how valuable a place is. It uses smart computers to look at things like people, health, and businesses. They put this info on maps. It’s easy to see. Lots of big companies liked this. They used it to understand where to find customers.

But GeoIQ wanted to sell in the U.S. To do that, they needed to meet some rules. These rules are about security. Things like ISO 27001, SOC 2, and HIPAA. They weren’t just suggestions. They were needed to do business in America.

GeoIQ had built its system to be secure from the start. They knew they handled a lot of data. Some of it was private. So, they made security a big deal. But proving they were secure to other people was hard.

Getting these security approvals usually takes a lot of work. You need to show a lot of proof. You have to answer many detailed questions about your tech. You need to manage many documents.

Doing all this by hand takes a lot of time and effort. For a company like GeoIQ that was growing fast, this was a problem. It took away time they could use to make their product better and sell it to more people.

GeoIQ needed something to help them. They needed a simple way to get these security approvals quickly. They needed a partner who could make the process clear and fast. This would help them sell their product in the U.S.

The Impending Obstacle: Unraveling the Knot of Global Security Mandates

A possessed cutting-edge product, a technological marvel capable of providing invaluable insights to a diverse range of industries.

Yet, to fully realize its potential on a global scale, particularly within the highly regulated U.S. market, they faced the imperative of proving their trustworthiness.

Simply stating their commitment to security was insufficient; they needed tangible, verifiable evidence that their systems and processes adhered to internationally recognized best practices.

The ISO 27001 standard, a globally respected framework for information security management systems, demands a comprehensive and systematic approach to managing sensitive company information.

SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2) focuses on the security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of customer data.

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) adds another layer of complexity for companies handling protected health information. Achieving compliance with these frameworks is not merely about ticking boxes; it’s about demonstrating a deep-seated commitment to safeguarding data and ensuring operational resilience.

For GeoIQ, the prospect of navigating these complex requirements through manual processes was daunting. Imagine the sheer effort involved in collating the necessary documentation, responding to the granular inquiries of auditors, and maintaining an up-to-date repository of security policies.

This was not only time-consuming but also prone to human error and inconsistencies. The risk of delays and potential setbacks in their U.S. market entry was palpable. They needed a more efficient and reliable pathway to demonstrating their security prowess.

SecureSlate Emerges: A Strategic Ally in the Pursuit of Compliance Excellence

GeoIQ strategically partnered with SecureSlate, a platform purpose-built to simplify and accelerate the often arduous journey toward multi-standard compliance and efficient audit management.

Recognizing the inherent overlaps and interconnectedness of various security standards, GeoIQ made a decisive move to tackle the requirements of ISO 27001 and SOC 2 concurrently.

This pragmatic approach, championed by Rishi Agrawal, VP of Engineering & Information Security Officer at GeoIQ, proved to be a stroke of strategic brilliance. “Since the modules were interrelated,” Rishi astutely noted, “we could roll out a more overarching, exhaustive compliance program instead of worrying about what we need to do for each standard.”

This holistic strategy, akin to cultivating a well-integrated ecosystem where different components mutually reinforce each other, allowed for greater efficiency and the development of a more robust and comprehensive security foundation.

The initial phase of their SecureSlate integration involved a concerted effort to foster a company-wide culture of compliance, spearheaded by the PeopleOps function.

Armed with SecureSlate’s well-structured plan and comprehensive documentation, GeoIQ effectively communicated the paramount importance of security compliance across the organization, transforming it from a peripheral IT concern to a core business imperative. This wasn’t merely about adhering to regulations; it was about cultivating a fundamental commitment to security at every level of the company.

Concurrently, a critical task involved the meticulous onboarding and tagging of GeoIQ’s extensive technological infrastructure within the SecureSlate platform.

“We have hundreds of AWS Lambdas and EC2 machines. We had to tag every S3 bucket as either production or non-production. This was a little bit of a task, but it was a one-time effort,” Rishi recounted.

This detailed inventory, while requiring an initial investment of time and effort, laid the crucial groundwork for automated monitoring, streamlined evidence collection, and a significantly more efficient audit process in the long run — a testament to the principle that strategic upfront investment yields substantial downstream benefits.

The user experience (UX) design of the SecureSlate platform emerged as a pivotal factor in GeoIQ’s remarkably swift progress toward compliance readiness.

Rishi lauded its intuitive nature, stating, “Each aspect of compliance is comprehensively covered and categorized. With just one click, you can see how each entity is faring in terms of compliance, including people, policies, and systems.”

This ease of navigation and comprehensive visibility, akin to having a well-organized and readily accessible command center, empowered GeoIQ to gain real-time insights into its compliance posture and identify areas requiring attention.

Rishi’s impressive 9 out of 10 rating for SecureSlate’s ease of use speaks volumes in the often-complex domain of security management software.

SecureSlate’s comprehensive functionality enabled GeoIQ to gain a profound understanding of their interconnected assets, encompassing not only their technological infrastructure but also their people and the policies governing their actions, and their intricate relationships with the various compliance standards they were pursuing.

This holistic perspective facilitated the timely identification and remediation of any compliance gaps. “Because checks against each control come pre-built, the platform also feels easy — you don’t have to figure these things out on your own,” Rishi explained.

This embedded intelligence acted as a virtual compliance expert, eliminating the guesswork and significantly accelerating the path to achieving certification.

Leveraging the capabilities of SecureSlate, GeoIQ implemented comprehensive compliance guardrails across its entire organizational landscape. This involved the meticulous creation of detailed security policy documentation — the bedrock of any robust security framework — the granular configuration of access management controls to ensure the principle of least privilege, the provision of thorough security and privacy training to all employees, transforming them from potential vulnerabilities into active participants in the security ecosystem, and the diligent tracking of policy acknowledgments to ensure accountability.

Furthermore, SecureSlate’s intelligent alert system acted as an invaluable early warning mechanism, proactively flagging any deviations from their established security posture, allowing GeoIQ to address potential issues before they escalated.

“With alerts configured,” Rishi noted, “we only have to address the issues that are flagged,” allowing their team to focus their valuable resources on strategic initiatives rather than being bogged down in reactive firefighting.

Tangible Outcomes: A Swift and Seamless Trajectory to Certification Success

The integration of SecureSlate yielded transformative results for GeoIQ’s compliance journey.

Within an astonishingly short span of just two weeks, they were fully prepared to undergo a comprehensive multi-standard security audit — a timeline that would typically be considered highly optimistic, if not entirely unrealistic, for organizations relying on traditional, manual compliance management methods.

SecureSlate’s intelligent common control mapping feature proved to be a game-changer, effectively eliminating the redundant effort of performing the same security checks across multiple standards that shared overlapping requirements.

“It’s a one-time effort that pays dividends over time,” Rishi astutely observed. This intelligent automation not only resulted in significant time savings but also minimized the potential for human error, leading to a more accurate and efficient overall compliance process.

Furthermore, SecureSlate’s auditor-friendly platform dramatically streamlined the often-daunting audit experience itself. The typically cumbersome and time-consuming task of collecting and securely sharing the vast amounts of audit evidence became remarkably hassle-free.

As Rishi enthusiastically recounted, “The audit was painless! We anticipated it was going to be harrowing given the scope and our experience with client IT reviews. But this was extremely seamless.”

This unexpectedly smooth audit process, a stark contrast to the often-stressful and complex experiences associated with security audits, underscores the profound impact of a well-designed and seamlessly integrated compliance management platform.

The ultimate validation of SecureSlate’s effectiveness lies in the remarkable speed with which GeoIQ achieved its critical compliance objectives.

Within a mere three months of leveraging the platform, they successfully received their SOC 2 Type 2 audit report and achieved ISO 27001 certification — a feat that typically consumes significantly longer timelines, often stretching into many months or even years for organizations navigating the intricacies of these standards through manual means.

Sustaining Compliance: An Enduring Commitment to Security Excellence

Rishi astutely emphasized that achieving initial certification is not the culmination of their compliance efforts but rather a significant milestone in an ongoing journey.

He underscored SecureSlate’s pivotal role in ensuring continuous audit success and maintaining a robust security posture over time.

“SecureSlate fills competency gaps. Many of our processes now follow a structured, compliant approach, whether it’s onboarding, offboarding, or matters related to asset management,” he explained.

SecureSlate, therefore, transcends its role as a mere certification tool; it becomes an integral component of GeoIQ’s operational fabric, embedding security and compliance best practices into its everyday workflows and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.