Helmuth Freericks Joins Virtual Piggy's Board of Advisors

  • People Moves
  • 25.11.2016 11:45 am

 Virtual Piggy, Inc. appoints Helmuth Freericks to join their Board of Advisors working alongside former FBI cyber security expert Don Codling. Mr. Freericks and Don Codling will assist CEO John Coyneto guide their technical level of security software for their Oink Mobile Payment Platform Technology.  

Helmuth Freericks is an industry pioneer in the PC and cyber security field, having co-founded one of the earliest PC security and antivirus companies; Command Software (a global leader in anti-virus and security software). Mr. Freericks served in various executive roles over the past 20 years, starting as Vice President of Research and Development at Command Software, promoted as Chief Technology Officer, and finally as CEO before the company was acquired by Authentium in 2002. While at Authentium, he served as CEO of Global Risc, an Authentium subsidiary, and later as CTO and then Chief Science officer at Authentium. He joined Commtouch/Cyren in 2010 with the acquisition of the Command division of Authentium, and served as General Manager, Anti-Malware Solutions, switching to CTO Antivirus in Jan 2013, bringing with him extensive anti-malware knowledge, as well as experience in managing all aspects of software product research, design, implementation, quality assurance and general management.

Virtual Piggy plans to utilize Mr. Freericks extensive knowledge of anti-virus and software development to continue to grow their unique and novel Oink Mobile Payment Platform Technology that is designed for the unmet needs of the more than 80 million 18 and under US consumers. The goal of Virtual Piggy through their Oink Mobile Payment Platform is through financial empowerment, to drive aspirational usage: child to teenager, teenager to adult, unbanked to banked – loner - to a community of users with common goals, desires and interests.

In regards to appointing Helmuth Freericks CEO John Coyne states, "Virtual Piggy is privileged to have Helmuth working with us. I have known Helmuth for many years after I discovered his unique talents in the late 80's while working in the Netherlands. When we met, he was successfully redesigning micro computers for a major US company that entered the then nascent market. His skills in the lower levels of operating system and hardware interactions with software make him ideally suited to provide advice, guidance and recommendations on the deep security we are placing in the new OINK payment platform, so that our users can be assured of total privacy and protection of their transactions and data communications unlike any competing alternative".

His inclusion in our team will be the foundation of our security efforts and will be supplemented by former F.B.I. cyber security expert Don Codling.

Don a 23 year veteran of the FBI's and Unit Chief of one of the FBI's leading cyber security teams will be providing guidance on best practices for securing Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and assuring that all information in our system about our users is safe and secure to the highest of standards, Don is also an expert in Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards and will be our principle advisor on standards compliance built into our Real Time Regulatory Oversight (ReTRO) components. These dual efforts will be critical in our interfaces to our banking partner's systems to assure our common integrity at every level of transaction processing. 

These complimentary skills will make the OINK Payment Platform arguably one of the most comprehensively secure systems anywhere. 

Helmuth states, "After retiring at the end of 2014, my time has been filled with technology research and it is great to be able to assist in the development of a groundbreaking new platform to ensure privacy and security for one of the most vulnerable segments of our community".

Don commented, "The forward leaning attitude of Virtual Piggy building in a flexible and adaptable cyber security framework as part of its very core foundation, combined with best practices of software/application development to include the continual use of Validation and Verification tools during each stage of production, places it among the leaders in the industry for best practices in secure application design. Virtual Piggy strives to never be the cyber security or data privacy 'weak link' with any business partners. The focus and dedication of John Coyne's team on exceeding the compliance standards of both PCI and COPPA indicate the corporate belief that "you practice good security engineering to achieve compliance, compliance alone does not achieve or mean good security " is alive and well at the firm.

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