“Secure By Nature” — Why SpotOn Uses Virtru for Simple Data Security

SpotOn is a restaurant point-of-sale and payments company that offers a suite of business technology for restaurants, cafes, and small businesses. SpotOn’s differentiator is its simplicity: Its hardware and software streamline the many complex operations that are part of running a dynamic business. Customers trust it to manage payments, timesheets, payroll, and other operations data quickly and seamlessly — but it’s also vital that this information is handled securely, without adding friction. In their search for a data security provider, SpotOn decided on Virtru. 

The Result

With Virtru, SpotOn can: 

• Make data security simple —  both for internal users and external customers who interact with Virtru Email Encryption and Virtru Secure Share.

• Enable secure, bidirectional communications, allowing customers to proactively send secure files and messages to the SpotOn team.

• Maintain customers’ trust with strong security practices that give them agency and control over their data. 

Easy Encryption for Restaurant Operations and Financial Transactions 

If you’ve ever worked in a bustling cafe or local business, you know how important it is for technology and payment systems to run without a hitch. One small hiccup can derail a Sunday brunch service or Black Friday sale. 

That’s why SpotOn is relentlessly focused on making their products seamless and easy to use. And, because SpotOn helps restaurants and small businesses manage highly sensitive information like credit card transactions, financial information, and PII, it’s essential to have strong security in place that does not introduce friction into their workflows. 

SpotOn needed to strike a balance of speed and security. “We've got to make sure that the way we design the interactability for our customers is really fluid, but also is secure by nature,” said Ryan Ogden, Senior Director of Information Security for SpotOn. “Virtru is one of the handful of technologies that I've come across in the last 10 years that I think is just paramount to having baseline daily workflow without friction. And that's really, really hard to do.” 

SpotOn uses Virtru to add a layer of effortless security to the workflows that its team already uses every day — helping them move quickly without sacrificing data protection. 

Virtru Email Encryption + Secure Share: No Hurdles, No Friction 

SpotOn uses Virtru for Google Workspace and Virtru Secure Share for seamless, secure communication with customers and partners. 

“If you want your users — and it doesn't matter if they're a [Microsoft] O365 environment or a Google [Workspace] environment — if you want to put a frictionless methodology in place that's very seamless and just hooks right into the daily workflow for people to securely transmit either the body of a message or the attachment of a message, this is the platform,” said Ogden. “It's agnostic across the board, and it fits right in.” 

SpotOn uses Virtru for any conversations they need to initiate with customers or external partners, where sensitive information is involved. “It just bakes right into the natural flow of email because email is still part of everybody's lives. And there's no learning curve. There's no ‘You’ve got to log into this other thing. You gotta learn something new.’  Virtru is very good at merging itself very passively into the concept of sending a secure email. And that allows us to provide a low friction point for people to interact with our customer support teams or risk teams should that need [arise]. They don't have to jump through a bunch of hurdles. They don't have to have institutional knowledge on how to do something. They just do what they've done normally, and we don't have to stop.” 

On the flip side, SpotOn also wanted a way for customers to easily submit sensitive information. “One of the things that we needed to solve for,” Ogden said, “was, what if they need to talk to me? What if your type of business is somebody who wants to have an open channel where people can send you that ad-hoc? They don't need to reach out. The Secure Share product that comes with this is really the complement to that.”

Virtru Secure Share creates a clear, simple way for SpotOn’s customers to securely submit sensitive information for things like support tickets, onboarding, and contracts. “That allows us to have an open ability for someone to initiate that conversation in the same secure manner — same attachment, same flow, same everything — but they don't have to wait for us. They can just do it. And it gives us that bidirectional ability to have a frictionless, fluid experience with anybody, whether it's internal, whether it's outside counsel, whether it's someone outside business, or internal —  they can just use the same email channel that they use today. And rather than sending it their normal way, they just hit a quick little toggle button, and then they have full control over everything they want to do with that message, and it empowers them. They have agency now. I think the approachability of it is key.”

SpotOn Is Committed to Data Security 

“If we don’t do our jobs right as a business… If we don't secure your data, if we make mistakes or do something that maybe opens your data up to another merchant, or something to that effect… you're gonna lose trust. We have a very large responsibility as a business to make sure that we're only providing the data that is specific to you, obviously, following any sort of regulatory controls that apply to that, as well.”

By prioritizing data security, SpotOn solidifies the trust it has already built with its customers, without slowing down or losing momentum. With Virtru, SpotOn can maintain a trusted, seamless flow of information with its customers, enabling these entrepreneurs to run their businesses with confidence, control, and agency.