How SecurityPal Collaborated with Plaid to Build Trust in the FinTech Ecosystem

In today's fast-paced fintech landscape, building trust through collaboration with security-conscious customers and partners is paramount. As a leader in the digital finance space, Plaid understands this better than most. With a network that includes over 8,000 customers and 12,000 data partners, Plaid is committed to fostering innovation while maintaining rigorous security standards. 

However, effectively managing Cybersecurity Due Diligence reviews from customers and partners at such a scale presented operational challenges in terms of efficiency and time management. This is where SecurityPal collaborated with Plaid to enhance trust across Plaid's extensive network.

The Partnership

The SecurityPal team provided support through dedicated security analysts embedded within Plaid's operations, a knowledge management repository, and AI tools that effectively generate responses to inquiries based on the curated knowledge repository. Our automation tools expedited responses, allowing Plaid's GRC team to build trust with their stakeholders more efficiently.

The SecurityPal team masked the complexities of filling security diligence requests that came in various lengths and formats such as Word, Google Docs, TPRM portals, emails, and more, helping Plaid accelerate deal velocity and build assurance with customers and data partners.

The Challenge

Before partnering with us, Plaid operated in a decentralized model, which required members of the sales team to respond to various security inquiries using a curated knowledge base. While they used RFP automation software to manage the knowledge base and partially automate responses to security questionnaires, maintaining the library, training employees to use the tool, and ensuring accuracy in responses continued to be a daunting challenge that led Plaid to pursue alternate solutions.

As the scale of inquiries and the number of deals increased, a different model was needed to scale these responses without compromising accuracy.

Kenneth Moras, Plaid’s GRC leader, said, “The sales team needed to do what they were best at and the security team to do what they were specialized in. In an effort to streamline security reviews, Plaid moved from a decentralized model to a centralized one. SecurityPal worked hand-in-hand with Plaid in developing and executing this process."

The Solution

Plaid needed a solution that could work seamlessly with their centralized model to support the GRC team in responding to security reviews. SecurityPal’s Questionnaire Concierge, leveraging both AI technology and expert security analysts, acted as an extended member of Plaid’s GRC team.

"SecurityPal’s strategy to effectively manage the knowledge base, use AI to automate responses, and employ skilled analysts with a background in cybersecurity ensured the responses met high standards, enabling our customers and partners to understand our cybersecurity strategy," Moras noted.

The Execution

When a new request to support security diligence is initiated by Plaid’s sales team via Jira, these requests are automatically triaged by SecurityPal analysts embedded into Plaid's GRC team's workflows. Based on the urgency and type of request, these support requests are prioritized by us.

Kenneth Moras said, “With over 95% accuracy in responses across all our RFI/RFP, and SecurityPal analysts tagging my team for clarity on the delta 5% for additional support, we were able to execute this program as one unified team to build trust with our clients and partners at unprecedented speed. Further, the SecurityPal Slack bot allows anyone at Plaid to query the knowledge base in real-time, making knowledge discovery a breeze. This also empowers our sales team to self-serve requests as they deem fit. SecurityPal’s quick response times and flexibility empower the sales and security teams to respond to security reviews quickly, accelerating sales cycles."

The Impact

Kenneth Moras said, “I needed my team to primarily focus on performing high-quality internal security risk assessments to guide our business in effectively managing our technology risks. Frequent security inquiries that happen several times a year resulted in extreme context switching, thus requiring a different approach to support our security sales enablement program.”

With the right combination of people, processes, and technology, SecurityPal acts as an extension of Plaid’s internal team, thus freeing up several hours of time for the Plaid Security and Sales team in executing the Trust Enablement program.

"SecurityPal has further enhanced our ability to build trust, and the outpouring of positive feedback we received from our customers and partners makes this partnership a true success," Moras said.

By partnering with SecurityPal, Plaid has been able to streamline their security review process, enhance their response quality, and build greater trust with their customers and partners.

For further information on how SecurityPal can enhance your security questionnaire process with increased efficiency and accuracy, contact us today.