SafeTalpa

Founded in 2019 with its headquarters in Bogota, Colombia, SafeTalpa operated in the financial software and cybersecurity sectors. The company was established by CEO Esteban Vargas and CTO Juan San Miguel. Vargas brought a business background with experience in corporate sales, while San Miguel contributed his expertise as a software engineer with a strong foundation in cybersecurity, including research in computer forensics and secure infrastructure.

SafeTalpa's primary offering was a software platform designed to help merchants ensure compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). This service addressed the complex regulations businesses must follow when processing, storing, and transmitting credit card data. The software would integrate with a merchant's existing infrastructure to scan for and assess how cardholder data was being stored. A key feature was its ability to automatically remedy certain security flaws to bring the system into compliance without requiring the merchant's engineering team to alter their codebase directly. Clients could monitor their compliance status through a dashboard that displayed a "SafeTalpa score," representing the fraction of their code that was compliant. The platform also provided logs and recommendations to address security issues.

The company also developed a defense against cryptojacking, a method where a computer's CPU is hijacked to mine cryptocurrency without the owner's consent. This service used machine learning to detect cryptojacking scripts, a problem traditional anti-virus software often misses. SafeTalpa targeted small to mid-sized businesses and enterprise clients, operating on a commission-based model with reseller partners to scale its business. The company participated in the XI Accelerator Program in 2019 and secured a seed round in the same year. According to PitchBook, SafeTalpa ceased operations as of December 7, 2021.

Keywords: PCI compliance, financial software, cybersecurity, credit card data security, PCI DSS, payment security, fraud protection, cryptojacking defense, secure data storage, automated compliance, security scanning, compliance dashboard, fintech, Bogota startup, Esteban Vargas, Juan San Miguel, XI Accelerator, merchant security, secure infrastructure, computer forensics