When we came across Strac it became clear that this team of ex-Amazon veterans had the right experience and vision to protect our most sensitive information at the highest point of vulnerability. These breaches happen where sensitive information is most vulnerable: Web servers, apps, email, Slack, Zendesk and other communication channels. “Strac is making it possible for startups & enterprises to securely interact with sensitive information without changing their workflows.”Ĭameron Borumand, a founding partner at FUSE, added in an emailed statement when contacted for comment: “Nearly two-thirds of Americans have experienced some form of data theft. “Fintechs like neobanks, proptechs, accounting firms are eliminating personally identifiable information data risks from backend servers, email, Zendesk, and Slack by leveraging Strac,” Mandelecha said.
(Strac was part of Y Combinator Winter 2022 batch.) Propelling the startup to new heights, Strac recently closed a $3.5 million seed investment led by FUSE with participation from Liquid 2 Ventures, Wayfinder Ventures, Rogue Capital and Y Combinator. And the best part is, they don’t have to reconfigure any of their business apps.”ĭespite the competition, Strac claims to have “dozens” of customers, with revenue growing 22% month over month. This is what technical decision makers love about Strac - they don’t have to build anything that requires deep security expertise, scalability, reliability, and massive capital investment. “If you don’t touch or store the data, you don’t run the risk of losing it. We are thinking of shifting that risk altogether,” Mandelecha said. “Most people are thinking about managing the liability that comes with touching sensitive data.
#REDACTED FOR PRIVACY SOFTWARE#
In 2013, Citigroup acknowledged that it failed to safeguard Social Security numbers, birthdates and other sensitive data for nearly 150,000 customers who filed for bankruptcy between 2007 to 2011, owing to a redaction software issue.īut Mandelecha makes the case that Strac at the very least releases companies from the burden of having to touch, store and manage some of the sensitive data on their infrastructure and across all the SaaS providers they use, which can be a time-consuming if done completely manually. In 2009, a flaw in HSBC’s imaging software caused the bank to inadvertently make certain line-of-credit and mortgage information public. Offered as a software-as-a-service (SaaS), Strac “translates” personal data across documents such as passports and bank statements into unique string of characters - tokens - that can’t be used to steal that person’s identity.Īuto-redaction systems can fall prey to the sorts of bugs that plague other algorithm-driven software, it’s worth noting - and Strac is likely no exception. Strac, which only requires an API integration and supports platform including Office 365, Gmail, Slack, OneDrive, Google Drive and Zendesk, uses algorithms to “tokenize” a customer’s data. This is why we are getting growing interest on a daily basis.” “Accepting that many of these behavioral changes are here to stay, business leaders are looking for solutions to manage the security and compliance risk that comes with these new norms. “Post pandemic, businesses are now servicing their customers a lot more over chat and emails, and with remote workforces, a lot of customer personal data moves through internal customer support tools, emails, chat, and more,” Mandelecha told TechCrunch via email. In 2020, after giving out his Social Security number to a customer support team, Mandelecha’s financial data was compromised. Mandelecha said that one of the driving forces behind Strac was a personal experience with identity theft. Prior to launching Strac in 2021, Mandelecha was a principal engineer at Amazon, where he spent 11 years building widgets, APIs and protocols for the company’s payments infrastructure.
#REDACTED FOR PRIVACY DRIVER#
A software platform, Strac automatically detects and redacts sensitive information, including Social Security numbers and driver licenses, from a company’s documents, as well as email, chat messages and web apps. Inspired to develop a solution, Aatish Mandelecha launched Strac, which helps companies in regulated industries - specifically financial and health care - safeguard against data issues by stripping out customer records.
Incompatible clauses and high compliance costs make doing business across the country a tougher proposition than it once was. While the laws are a step in the right direction from a consumer standpoint, for startups, it can be tricky to navigate the patchwork of policies they’ve codified. The California Consumer Privacy Act is perhaps the best known, followed by the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, the New York Privacy Act and the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act. states are passing privacy and security laws aimed at protecting people’s data. Increasingly, absent a federal framework, U.S.
0 kommentar(er)
