Back in September, Lou Senko, Chief Availability Officer at Q2, put out a paper in ABA entitled “Leaping the Innovation Chasm by Securing the Data". In the 12-page article, he outlines how, too often, security and compliance are viewed as opposing forces to innovation and speed. But when done right, more security and resilience actually leads to faster innovation with less friction and less risk. Here are a few highlights from Lou's article as well as an update on how Q2 is continuing to leverage a security-first approach.  

Working with ALTR

Understandably, Lou didn’t want to end up in the headlines as the latest software company to suffer a breach, yet he knew traditional methods of security were no longer working. Company after company keeps bolting on more and more security solutions that take endless resources to manage, hinder performance, and still leave data exposed. Lou decided to take a radical leap. His team at Q2 asked themselves, “What if we just assumed the network was already breached and the bad actors were already inside (a key principle of Zero Trust)? If the data is both the target and the risk point, what if we simply removed it?” That was the “ah ha!” moment: the best way to keep the data safe is to not have the data at all.  

Resolved to remove all of Q2’s sensitive data from their own environment and securely store it in the cloud, his team needed a solution that could isolate and protect all their sensitive data in the cloud while providing intelligence and control over how data is being consumed. They chose ALTR for our proprietary tokenization as a service and for our shared belief that you should treat your sensitive data how your treat your money; using ALTR as an ATM for their data, Q2 could:

• Provide a view of all transactions (Bank Statement)
• Create rules and thresholds to mask or limit consumption (Withdrawal Limits or Freezing Accounts)
• Provide a secure cloud-native vault (Literal Bank Vault)

With ALTR, Lou’s vision came to life. Their data was secure plus they had better visibility and control over data consumption. To learn more about how Q2 uses ALTR to protect their data, read the full case study here.

Working with ALTR, Continued...

But that’s not the end of it.  

Being as innovation-driven as they are, it’s not surprising that Q2 continues to grow rapidly. Looking to maximize the value of their data, they invested in Snowflake’s Data Cloud, and Lou was once again thinking about security and risk efforts associated with a project like this. Coincidentally, their investment in Snowflake corresponded with the availability of ALTR’s new cloud integration for Snowflake.  

To hear the rest of the story and learn how to achieve a security-first approach to re-platforming data in the cloud, sign up for our upcoming webinar with Lou and Snowflake’s Head of Cybersecurity Strategy Omer Singer.

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