Case Study: Pollinate achieves faster vendor due diligence and continuous third-party security monitoring with UpGuard

Pollinate relies on UpGuard to continuously monitor their security posture as well as their vendors'

Pollinate, a London‑based software company reinventing merchant acquiring for banks, faced a time‑consuming, manual vendor due diligence process that relied on research, questionnaires and ad‑hoc checks. CISO Jim Hart and Procurement Director Vaida Maksims needed faster, auditable vendor assessments and continuous monitoring so their lean security team could scale. They evaluated options and selected the UpGuard platform to provide instant scans, historical evidence and automated vendor oversight.

UpGuard delivered instant vendor scans, continuous monitoring, security questionnaires, auditable reports and alerting (e.g., notifications on a 5‑point score drop and a 600‑point remediation threshold), enabling Pollinate to speed onboarding and confidently work only with A/B‑rated vendors. Using UpGuard, Pollinate now monitors 33 vendors, 7+ digital assets and 70+ risk vectors, caught issues such as an unexpected hosted customer site, and renewed on the UpGuard Starter plan to support growth while reducing manual effort and improving third‑party risk management.

Pollinate

Jim Hart

Chief Information Security Officer