Hyperconnect expands to new markets using Vanta’s compliance solutions

The company

Connecting people through innovative social experiences 

Hyperconnect is a global video chat platform powered by innovative technologies, including AI and WebRTC, that connects more than 100 million users worldwide.

Founded in Seoul in 2014, the company is part of the global entity Match Group, which includes major brands such as Tinder, Match.com, and Hinge.

As part of their mission to “innovate social experiences, making every connection a delightful adventure”, Hyperconnect recently launched Azar—a global video chat platform that now operates worldwide.

In line with the international expansion of its parent company and the global reach afforded by AI technologies, Hyperconnect is focusing on scaling its products and services to other markets. 

This move brings with it a need to meet global security standards while ensuring local compliance.

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The challenge

Global standards, local compliance

As its business and service areas expanded, Hyperconnect recognised the need for certifications that would meet the compliance requirements in every country it covered.

In addition to global security standards, the company also faced a strongly regulated market in its home base of South Korea, with a need to adhere to domestic laws and regulations.

Hyperconnect identified four standards it would need to obtain in order to be compliant in new and existing markets—as well as providing the opportunity to scale in the future:

• ISO 27001: To comply with global security standards
• K-ISMS: To comply with Korean laws and regulations
• SOX ITGC: To meet the requirements of Match Group, a NASDAQ--listed company
• NIST SP 800-82: To adhere to US. security standards and best practice

With a very small Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) team of its own, Hyperconnect had limited resources with which to handle this crucial area of the business. 

Attempting to obtain the necessary security standards independently quickly led to difficulties with documentation and asset control, wasted resources and inefficiencies, and the ever-present risk of mismanagement.

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The solution

A centralised platform to streamline compliance 

For Hyperconnect, the priority was to find a centralised channel that would allow the company to easily obtain and manage all its compliance requirements from a single platform.

In addition to centralisation, automation was high on the list of solution requirements. The right platform would use automated workflows to save time and resources, manage different policy versions and compliance statuses, and simplify risk management processes for maximum efficiency.

In its search for a solutions partner that would meet its business needs, the Hyperconnect team compared numerous software providers, including Hyperproof, before ultimately deciding on Vanta as its partner of choice.

Vanta’s robust and scalable GRC solution would allow Hyperconnect to seamlessly manage, monitor and control its global risk and compliance efforts across the entire business.

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The impact

Smooth onboarding, seamless implementation

As a result of Vanta’s streamlined approach and automated workflows, the preparation of K-ISMS—the certification of the information protection management system developed by the Korean government—took just three months, with the audit completed within one week.  

According to Kim, both the onboarding process and implementation stage were made easy due to the high usability of the Vanta platform. What’s more, the development of a custom framework for K-ISMS enabled a straightforward path to certification while meeting the specific needs of the company.

Speaking on the value represented by Hyperconnect’s partnership with Vanta, Kim explains that this is “very high, because it’s one of the key conditions needed to achieve what we refer to as ‘ComplOps’ (Compliance Operations) in our Security Compliance team.”

Following the successful attainment of this standard, two further certifications—SOX ITGC and ISO 27001—are now underway, helping to equip Hyperconnect with a global security framework that ensures compliance in every market, as it continues its rapid global expansion.

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