Spreedly Adds Chief Information Security Officer

Security Veteran Joins the Senior Team to Grow and Evolve Cyber Protection for Spreedly and its Customers

DURHAM, NC — Aug 11, 2020 — Spreedly, the software company that accelerates global commerce by offering a secure and flexible platform that welcomes all payments participants, today announced it has added a chief information security officer (CISO) to the team.

Christopher Hudel joins the Spreedly senior leadership team to grow and evolve cyber protection for Spreedly and its customers. The chief information security officer and his team will further enhance key security strategies and best practices. He will also serve as a go-to subject matter expert on IT threats in the payments space, and other security and compliance issues.

“From day one, we've understood the responsibility entrusted to us by our customers to provide a secure, stable platform,” commented Justin Benson, CEO at Spreedly. “The addition of Christopher to the team reinforces our commitment to the ongoing investment and formalization of processes and services required to support our global customer base. As we expand, the expectations for our processes, technology, and business practices do as well.”

Christopher brings over two decades of information security experience in the domains of application and product security, incident and crisis management, penetration testing ("red teaming"), security roadmap and strategy, security operations, digital transformation, architecture, evangelism and leadership. A self-described “information security pragmatist” in seeking the right approach for the right risk, Christopher has nearly 15 years of experience in the financial services vertical with organizations including First Union / Wachovia Bank, Lending Tree, Bank of America, and First Citizens Bank.

Christopher previously served as an adjunct professor teaching information security graduate and undergraduate courses for the University of North Carolina in Charlotte, NC. Reflecting his commitment to security best practices, he retains a variety of cybersecurity, defense, and incident response credentials, notably GIAC Information Security Expert (GSE), Offensive Security Certified Expert (OSCE), and Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

“What really impressed me about Spreedly is the focus and commitment to security, operational excellence and meeting the ever-evolving payments needs of so many different types of organizations in a variety of industries and geographies,” explained Hudel. “That level of maturity is an incredible testament to the entire team. I’m looking forward to working across the Spreedly organization to build on our success — delivering even more security innovation and value to the payments ecosystem.”

Spreedly brings the power of payments orchestration to merchants, platforms, and payment services globally. The organization works to deliver on the vision of allowing all payment ecosystem participants (merchants, marketplaces, gateways, payment services, and others) to work with whomever they choose, quickly and safely, via one easily maintainable integration.

About Spreedly

We orchestrate payments for the world’s most innovative businesses. Global enterprises and hyper-growth companies grow their digital business faster by relying on our payments platform. Hundreds of customers worldwide secure card data in our PCI-compliant vault and use tokenized card data to enable and optimize nearly $14 billion of annual transaction volumes with any payment service. Spreedly is headquartered in downtown Durham, NC.