Legado , a Scotland-based open document and data platform, has acquired WonderBill , a consumer and business-to-business (B2B) bill management technology. Launched in 2016, UK-based WonderBill allows consumers to manage all their household bills and subscriptions.

The company was backed by Shell Ventures, Shell’s corporate venture capital arm. Legado is a supplier to some of the UK’s leading organisations, providing a customer-centric solution to document communication and management, helping reduce operational costs and providing a more connected digital experience. Legado plans to repurpose WonderBill’s technology to support its B2B personal data management and engagement platform that counts M&G, one of the UK's largest and longest established investment managers, among its client base.

FNZ, the global wealth management platform, and M&G are major backers of Legado through an investment round in 2019. The integration of the consumer and B2B bill management technology into Legado’s platform will provide Legado’s corporate partners with a compliant solution to manage, share, and access personal data. Company officials have stated that Legado’s digital vault improves personal document management, with machine learning and analytics capabilities providing insights that are used to help manage personal affairs and reduce the fragmentation of personal documents.

What is the digital vault technology? Digital vault technology has seen more interest in recent years, following an increased focus on customer wellbeing within the context of the current challenging economic backdrop. Digital vaults represent a much higher level of security, being a place where a person’s verified and authenticated source documents are securely stored in digital form and can be retrieved and shared, at different levels, by and with authorised individuals, companies, or institutions. These documents are ones that are used to prove core identities, such as a digital birth certificate or a passport, or have sensitive information such as health records or bank statements.

Losing this, or having it stolen, represents a far greater problem for the individual. That is why as well as using encryption, like a wallet, a vault will always require a higher level of access rights, typically two-factor authentication at a minimum. Whether stored in the cloud or within a chip on a smartphone, a vault can capture and authenticate all key credentials.

It can also be used as a secure place within which individuals can securely collect and maintain their other important digital assets, including their vaccination or medical records, for example. The importance of data protection Data protection refers to the various processes and mechanisms designed to protect an organisation's data from compromise, loss, theft, and corruption. By implementing data protection, organisations guard themselves and their customers against identity theft and phishing scams.

With the increasing reliance on the cloud and online transactions, many organisations are handling more and more data. Bad actors, outside an organisation and inside of it, constantly look to compromise an organization's data security for their own ends. Data breaches often aim to steal information from a company, selling it to others, or using it to commit acts of fraud.

Therefore, strategic partnerships can entail sharing intelligence, conducting research, outsourcing some services, and identifying practical ways to deal with attacks and breaches. .