Gigaforce is a cloud-based fintech company with a novel solution for the insurance industry’s need for efficient subrogation and recovery claims processing. Such customers insist on dealing with providers who are SOC 2-certified. Larger enterprises have very high expectations for compliance, and for the assurance that their suppliers are continuously compliant – which SOC 2 Type 2 provides. Akitra provided the automated monitoring and compliance solution to enable Gigaforce to reach that certification.
Compliance is central to the financial services industry for which Gigaforce provides AI and blockchain based solutions. The company management was familiar with compliance legislation and regulation such as Sarbanes-Oxley, but less so with SOC 2. With customers insisting on SOC 2 compliance, the company sought help in achieving it using a compliance platform, with automation being the most important requirement.
“We are big advocates of automation. Skilled people are hard to find and so you need to figure out how to do as much as possible in a more efficient, less labor-intensive way,” said CEO Sanjeev Chaudhry.
Gigaforce quickly realized the benefits of choosing Akitra’s Compliance automation platform. “Compliance automation is not only faster, it also ensures higher consistency and reliability, to say nothing of being less expensive and requiring fewer internal resources.”
Gigaforce decided to go with SOC 2 Type 2 certification, which requires monitoring and evidence collection over a period of several months, unlike the “point in time” compliance model of Type 1. Akitra’s automated approach to monitoring the company’s cloud assets and third-party cloud services for functions such as HR, project collaboration and DevOps, and automated evidence collection from all those sources, ensured a smooth path to audit readiness.
Now that Gigaforce is fully SOC 2 Type certified, it is finding having that stamp of approval is helping to close business. “We need to build trust with our prospects and customers, because they are entering into along-term partnership with us. Being compliant helps us establish that trust and eliminates a sales obstacle at the same time.
For Gigaforce, an unexpected benefit of going through the compliance process with Akitra was the company’s discovery that the process had also helped it instill more discipline in its policies and processes. “We are now better poised for long-term success”, said Sanjeev. “And we are comfortable with Akitra being our partner when we need to go through the audit process again in the future or when we seek certification for other compliance frameworks beyond SOC 2”.
