A balance between business benefits and information security is not a tango for two – dancing moves can be automatized and become routine, however. Instead of tango, basketball wizards Tomi Hautala and Sami Laaksonen prefer to talk about controlled teamwork, where trust between the players also becomes key to success.
When a Finnish professional athlete ends their career, within a couple of years of their quitting we usually get news of one of two types: they either have sunk to the bottom of the bottle or are on their way to a successful new career. Fortunately, this story is of the latter type.
Many sports fans recognize Tomi Hautala and Sami Laaksonen as successful, national-level basketball players. Today, the two men are successful information security entrepreneurs working in a company called Propentus Oy. The next step is to rise from national level to the international top league. “Internationalization is a big issue for us, and we’ve already started operations in the Middle East,” says Laaksonen. He has experience in information security in things like product development, and is currently responsible for marketing and partner management.
Tomi Hautala, who grew up in a family of entrepreneurs and has worked at companies like Nokia is one of the company’s founders. Early on, he recruited his fellow player Laaksonen, whom he knew very thoroughly. “In this line of business, it’s very important to know each person’s background, their values and operating practices,” Hautala explains. “We have followed the same principle in the hiring of each of the 40 employees in our company,” he adds.
Business of trust with a professional sporting mentality
The duo has internalized not only the sporting-style operating model, but also the importance of trust in your fellow players. “We utilize this combination successfully in our business,” Hautala and Laaksonen sum up.
And they are right: this, if any, is a business of trust. Finding the three core values of the company was easy: skilled, productive and open. “One of our driving forces is the passion to solve problems, to do it well and in a way that is transparent for the client,” Hautala adds.
Propentus’ selection of services is more than topical. The Information Security Act alone requires identity data to be stored properly at companies. At the same time, it is sensible to make sure that all collected identity data is stored in a way that best benefits the business.
For this and many other questions of identity and user rights management Propentus offers cost-efficient solutions. Besides the public sector and healthcare, the company’s clientele consists of top players in the fields of energy, industry, retail and finance – as well as airport security.
“This is purely a question of a proven and trustworthy partner automatizing a company’s identity and user rights management routines, i.e. the processes of granting, modifying or removing rights, and producing real-time information for supporting business. This improves information security and eliminates unnecessary licensing fees,” Hautala sums up the benefits for clients.
At the end of our meeting at the Hotel Torni in Helsinki, I shake the hands of the two basketballer-entrepreneurs: the handshake is firm and the eye contact direct.
Text: Päivi Remes
