Helping Actevely to protect their community

In this case-study we talk about how ProtectYour.Business helped the Yoga-Marketplace Actevely.com to understand and reduce the risks of abuse on their platform.

Case Study

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Actevely - The leading Yoga Retreat Platform in Switzerland: Assess Risks & Mitigate them

We’re happy to share our first case study we have created based on our work with Actevely - an online marketplace where Yoga-Teachers promote their Yoga retreats. They contacted us with the desire to do a risk assessment on their platform and help them identify the most pressing issues they should tackle to protect their business and customers from online fraud.

Having previously worked at Car4You, Siroop, and YouTube, Isabel Carbotta, Co-Founder of Actevely understands the importance of being prepared for the day their platform will attract people with bad intentions.

Together with Isabel Carbotta and Marcel Eyer, the two Yoga-Enthusiasts behind Actevely.com, protectyour.business looked into how the platform could be abused.

The Rise Of Online Marketplaces And What Risks They’re Exposed To

E-Commerce experienced a rapid growth in the past few years. It’s estimated that there are up to 24 Million online stores globally. Just the top 10 platforms, including Amazon, Ebay, etc serve a combined 8 Billion visitors combined.

The growth and the monetary value associated with it, makes these marketplaces an attractive target for scammers of all kinds. That’s why it’s important for online businesses to constantly assess the risks they are exposed to and decide where it makes sense for them to make further investments.

Actevely reached out to protectyour.business to understand the risks that the company and customers could encounter. A rising platform like Actevely will inevitably attract scammers who will use their criminal creativity to abuse the marketplace.

  1. Understand the situation: In order to identify the risk, we need to understand how the marketplace works and is used. Everything between the login-flow and administrative processes performed by the staff is relevant to this risk assessment.

  2. Understand the protagonists: Who are the personas that are relevant to the success of the platform?

  3. Identify potential avenues of abuse: Identify ways the platform can be abused and harm can be caused for Actevely or their customers.

  4. Pragmatic solutions: Come up with ways to reduce the risk of abuse with pragmatic solutions that don’t slow down the growth of the platform and are fitting to the level of maturity of the organization

Engagements like these are an opportunity to help customers like Actevely on their journey to grow and offer more value to their customers.

How We Help Customers Like Actevely

Small Investment - Actionable Output

The way we work with customers like Actevely is to understand their situation and priorities and then come up with clear and actionable next steps. In this case we started the work with a 60 minute workshop in which the founders of Actevely shared their concerns and provided information based on a questionnaire.

What followed then was one week of collaboration on a document that would describe the platform, risks, and potential solutions. This happened in close collaboration with the founders. In another 60 minutes workshop we then went through a variety of options and scoped out mitigations Actevely can implement now to increase their chances of detecting scammers on their platform.