CASE STUDY
ÉTUDE DE CAS
Silvr turns to compliance to fuel growth in Europe and beyond
Silvr uses Vanta as the fastest path to audit and uses their newly achieved ISO 27001 compliance to fuel growth in European markets and beyond.
Vanta’s ease-of-use allowed Silvr to self-service a majority of their audit requirements — and their Customer Success Manager took care of the rest.
Silvr chose Vanta due to their experience and tenure in the space — and found that their auditor’s familiarity with Vanta meant a faster path to audit.
“We really felt supported by Vanta, not just on our certification process but also on what is the best way to approach information security.”
The Company
On-demand financing solutions to help every business succeed
Silvr was established in 2020 to offer innovative financing solutions to digital businesses, allowing them to grow without collateral requirements or equity dilution. The company was founded by serial entrepreneurs Nima Karimi and Gregory Tappero with a clear objective: to support budding entrepreneurs in achieving their success stories.
Their unique financing option, called revenue-based financing, helps small and midsize businesses throughout Europe get funded in minutes while retaining 100% of their capital. With a global team of 100 employees, Silvr has successfully deployed more than 100 million Euros to over 300 companies as of 2022, demonstrating their commitment to supporting business growth.
Thomas Pelletier, VP of Engineering, was hired in 2022 to lead technical infrastructure and information technology at Silvr. However, due to the heavily-regulated nature of the fintech industry, his role quickly evolved and he was also tasked with leading security and compliance efforts. Silvr handles sensitive customer data, such as banking, financial, and CRM information, and Thomas quickly recognized the central role of security and compliance in establishing trust with their customers.
The Challenge
Using compliance as a way to demonstrate trust
To tackle these challenges, Silvr adopted a proactive approach to managing risk by implementing comprehensive security controls, employee training, and regular audits. This not only bolstered their security practices but also helped foster a culture of security awareness throughout the organization.
However, as customer expectations continued to increase, Thomas knew it was essential for Silvr to explore some of the global compliance frameworks to demonstrate trust. Without proof from a compliance standard, proving trust to prospects required more time and effort to reassure them that Silvr was handling their data safely, so in 2022, they began to research the various standards recognized throughout Europe and decided on getting ISO 27001.
{{quote-2}}
Thomas found himself dedicating time and resources on what these frameworks were, and how to implement them. He realized early on that Silvr needed experts to get started and that it was unfeasible for him to dedicate the next six months to bringing the entire company up to speed on ISO 27001 and other frameworks. Choosing a cloud compliance provider to work with was an obvious, time-effective next step for Thomas.
The Solution
Vanta, the fastest and most cost-effective way to compliance
Thomas began exploring cloud compliance vendors and narrowed his search down to three. He ultimately chose Vanta due to its reputation as a market leader and extensive experience working with a diverse range of both large and small companies. One of the deciding factors was familiarity with startups of a similar size — Thomas knew that implementation speed and processes vary from company to company, so Vanta’s expertise in working with fast-growing, early-stage startups was a key deciding factor.
The self-service aspect of Vanta also proved to be invaluable for Silvr. They were able to connect Vanta to their systems themselves using pre-built integrations, and with the help of their Customer Success Manager, they were able to customize scoping for the rest of their integrations. They also appreciate Vanta’s Slack notifications, which allow the Silvr team to stay in workflows they’re already familiar with to remediate security tasks.
Silvr chose one of Vanta’s partner auditors, British Assessment Bureau, to conduct their audits. “Another reason why I enjoyed working with Vanta is that we’ve never had to work with an auditor before,” said Thomas. “So when the time came to pick an auditor, I was able to ask Vanta for a recommendation and they came back with the perfect match.” British Assessment Bureau’s familiarity with the Vanta platform and similarly-sized startups proved invaluable as they fully understood Silvr’s tech stack, requirements, and how to best implement them in Vanta.
The Impact
Streamlined path to ISO 27001 to fuel growth
After partnering with Vanta, Silvr successfully achieved ISO 27001 certification in late 2022 — within their planned timeline. Thomas especially credits Silvr’s success to his Customer Success Manager and Vanta’s support team who guided him throughout the implementation process and provided advice on the best way to approach information security more broadly.
With Vanta, Thomas now has visibility into Silvr’s progress to additional standards by being able to see what controls overlap with ISO 27001 — saving him valuable time from duplicating efforts. They’ve seen the benefits of expediting their compliance by using Vanta and their certifications to assure prospects about the protection of their financial data and plan to continue to strengthen their security posture as they expand throughout Europe.
{{quote-3}}
