Before using Crossbeam, you may have considered using a "hashing" approach with your partners. That's no surprise, as it does offer two distinct benefits when compared to just openly sharing data:
To ensure everything is stored securely in transit and by any intermediary.
To achieve with a double-blind way of matching data so that your partner is only able to unhash records that match their data, and vice versa.
When you use Crossbeam, however, you don't need to worry about hashing, encrypting, or decrypting your data because we handle all of those details in our secure backend matching process. Crossbeam provides the benefits of double-blind matching mentioned above, but without any of the drawbacks and with extra benefits. Read on to learn more.
With Crossbeam, our system is conducting a double-blind match, which is functionally equivalent to a hash-based approach, but with extra layers for security, quality, and scalability. In our backend, we take care of the encryption and matching for you to give you secure and more accurate results.
How we do it
Rather than use a simple hash-and-lookup scheme, we store raw data in a secure environment, cleanse it for accuracy and scalability (always encrypting it in transit and at rest), run a proprietary matching algorithm to find matches, and provide tightly managed functionality on top of those matches.
The details
Security: Crossbeam's environment is secure and independently audited. Your raw data is safe. We offer a SOC 2 Type II report that details the practices and procedures that make Crossbeam a secure company and environment for the storage of your data. (SOC 2 Type II report available at our Security Dashboard)
Accuracy: Crossbeam cleanses and refines your data prior to matching. A traditional "hash and trade" approach is subject to false negative issues when the data is dirty or not standardized on both ends (dirty inputs mean the hash won't match). By performing the comparison directly in our intermediate layer, we ensure the highest possible match rate between data sets, even when the source or formats of the data differ. (See ‘How does Crossbeam do matching?’)
Control: Data is only shared when overlaps occur, and only the fields you choose are shared. By default, no raw data is shared with partners, even when the data overlaps. Raw data is only revealed when overlap-based data sharing rules are configured in the product. Data sharing rules are configured as partner/overlap/field permutations, such that you can say "when records from segment x of my data overlap with records from segment y of my partner's data, reveal field z." See how this works here. The resulting behavior is functionally equivalent to a simple hashing reverse-lookup process, with the added accuracy, scalability, and security benefits mentioned above.
Selective Sync: Only sync the fields that matter. Our data syncing process allows you to choose precisely the objects and fields we sync. (See more for Salesforce here and Hubspot here.) If you want to prevent syncing of emails or other PII, you can disable syncing for those right in the Crossbeam app and they will never be stored in our platform.