Spirion recognized for outstanding product, customer success, and employee response achievements

Spirion recently won eight new awards for outstanding achievements in product innovation, customer deployments, and employee response to COVID-19 from the Golden Bridge Awards, Globee International Awards, and One Planet Awards programs.
We are proud to be recognized by the following organizations:

Globee International Awards for:

• New Privacy & Security Product (Data Privacy Manager)
• Information Technology Project of the Year for empowering higher-education institutions to safeguard the personal information of students, faculty, staff, and donors
• Customer Success of the Year for aiding a financial services firm to transition to 100% work-from-home during the height of tax season

Golden Bridge Awards for:

• Data Protection Innovation (Data Privacy Manager)
• Information Leak Prevention Innovation (Data Privacy Manager)
• Information Technology Project of the Year in collaboration with Illinois College
• Company Work From Home Implementation of the Year in collaboration with TaxSlayer

One Planet Award for:

• Company Response of the Year for our team’s coordinated and rapid response to aid those impacted by the global pandemic

In its 7th year, the Globee International Awards honor achievements of individuals and teams that set industry benchmarks for excellence. The 12th Annual Golden Bridge Awards recognize the world’s top companies for their organizational performance, innovations, products, leadership, and initiatives. The One Planet Awards, in its 5th year, recognizes companies from all over the world for their business and professional excellence.

Here’s an overview of our award-winning customer and employee initiatives:

Information Technology Project of the Year at Illinois College

In preparing for an upcoming Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) audit, Illinois College, one of the nation’s top liberal arts colleges, needed to identify where the personal information of students, their guardians, faculty and administration was located so they could ensure its privacy. The 191-year old institution implemented Spirion to discover, classify, and protect student and faculty data according to compliance regulations and campus rules.
Since they deployed Spirion, Illinois College has gained full visibility into where all of their hard-to-find personal information lives and has automated the protection options for that data. Their small IT team has also effectively reduced their personal data footprint, which allows them to more accurately focus their limited resources and data security spend.

We salute Marc Benner, Assistant Chief Information Officer at Illinois College, and the Office of Financial Aid for your Spirion deployment being recognized as Information Technology Project of the Year by the Globee Awards and Golden Bridge Awards.

Read more about Illinois College’s successful deployment here.

Customer Success of the Year at TaxSlayer

Cloud-based DIY tax preparation software company, TaxSlayer, recently deployed Spirion to help it maintain business continuity and protect consumers’ data during the height of tax season and beyond. Given the sensitive nature of their business, TaxSlayer’s main objective is to be the first line of defense, ensuring that all customer tax filings are secure—from the point of entry, through processing, and to the data center. Spirion has helped TaxSlayer improve data discovery accuracy, reduce risk with data remediation, and ultimately improve the efficiency and speed associated with protecting personal data.

When the global pandemic caused the United States and the rest of the world to shut down, TaxSlayer seamlessly transitioned their 300 seasonal call center staff and 200 permanent employees to a remote work model. Shutting down was not an option amid tax season, with millions of tax returns left to process. Having implemented Spirion before the work-from-home transition, TaxSlayer was confident that consumers’ personal information did not live on employee workstations, but instead, was secure in their data center. With a Spirion agent on each laptop, TaxSlayer was confident that personal data was not at risk.

We salute Michael Blache, TaxSlayer CISO, and Ricky Bryant, Information Security Engineer, for your Spirion deployment being recognized as one of the best Customer Successes of the Year by the Globee Awards and Golden Bridge Awards.

Read more about Tax Slayer’s successful deployment here.

Company Response of the Year

When the COVID-19 shelter-in-place and work-from-home orders went into effect in April, millions of people moved to a pervasive ‘work, study, and teach from home’ policy with many individuals working on their private computers. Spirion responded immediately by introducing free resources to help remote employees and enterprises implement a ‘privacy-first’ work environment. We launched a 60-day no-cost license for organizations to use our Sensitive Data Manager software to search remote workforce computers for personal data. We also provided a no-cost download of our Data Discovery Agent to help remote workers discover personal information living on their computers.

At the same time, the Spirion team launched a This One’s On Us restaurant relief program to aid local restaurant workers impacted by the shutdown. Since mid-April, company employees have participated in the program by donating a percentage of their paychecks to purchase meals from local eateries to give to the restaurant’s staff. We have raised $10,000, which has fed more than 800 restaurant workers and their families.

We salute the entire Spirion team for being recognized as Company Response of the Year— thanks to your coordinated and rapid response to aid those impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic.