Harbor Plan Completes Google OAuth Security Review and Verification 3x Faster and Saves 40%

Fast-growing sales software partners with Nylas to complete complex security review under budget and ahead of schedule

How does the first intelligent sales assistant for financial advisors complete Google OAuth Verification under budget and ahead of schedule to ensure secure and reliable integrations for a third of its customers?

By partnering with Nylas, Harbor Plan completed the OAuth Security Verification process for a critical integration in record time. The Nylas Express Security Review made it easier, faster, and cheaper for the team to navigate the many requirements of the complex reviews process within a single dashboard.

Enterprise-Grade Sales Execution at a Fraction of the Cost

Harbor Plan helps investment advisors, insurance agents, attorneys, and certified financial planners automate their sales conversations so that they can refocus on other business-critical work. Harbor Plan’s virtual sales assistant identifies leads from across your go-to communication channels and sends outreach that empowers you to close more business. 

The company uses intelligent automation to help you take full advantage of referral lead services, convert website traffic into customers, maximize appointments from workshops, and more. Armed with enterprise-grade sales execution, service professionals can spend less time following up with leads and more time running their business.

Challenges:

Ensuring Reliable and Secure Email Integrations for Its Users

To enable smarter and more seamless sales automation, Harbor Plan integrates with different email providers so that its users can easily schedule follow-up sequences directly within their email client. One such provider is Gmail, Google’s massively popular email service with over 1.5 billion users.

Since 2019, when Google announced sweeping changes to the way third-party apps can access user data, companies that work with certain sensitive information must undergo the Google OAuth Verification. Each year, these companies must complete the review process to ensure that their users have control and transparency into what data they share.

Harbor Plan is one such company. Since the Harbor Plan platform accesses what Google labels restricted scopes (or data that allows it to read emails on behalf of its users) the team needed to complete not only the standard brand verification but also an independent, third-party security assessment with a Google-approved security assessor. 

“The Google OAuth Security Verification is a long and pretty ambiguous process,” says Rob Carrington, Head of Engineering at Harbor Plan. “It took us three months to achieve the initial verification, and it wasn’t particularly straightforward. We really had to dig to get a clear idea of when we should start the review and how much effort we needed to put in. Not only are the requirements unclear, but there isn’t any standard way to expedite the review process.”

After Harbor Plan finished its first security assessment, the team had hoped the renewal process would be far easier. But since requirements change from year to year, the team once again faced a full-scale evaluation of their integration.

With 30% of their customers using the Gmail integration, Carrington knew that these significant security hurdles from Google wouldn’t go away. His team needed to find a solution to streamline the verification process without investing even more time and resources.

Solution:

Nylas Partners with Google Approved Security Assessors to Expedite Review at the Lowest Cost

Harbor Plan needed a better way to facilitate its yearly Google OAuth Verification and security assessment that wouldn’t tax the resources of its growing team. After undergoing a painful and lengthy verification process on their own, the team discovered the Nylas Express Security Review (ESR). 

“When we contacted our previous security partner to go through the OAuth Verification process again, we thought we might get a discount since we’d already completed it once,” remarks Carrington. “But actually, the firm came back to us and said it was going to be even more expensive. That’s when we knew we needed to make a change.”

The Nylas ESR provides a single dashboard where companies starting their review process can get quotes upfront, check requirements, manage work, and submit their application. And by partnering with the top Google-certified security firms, applicants can navigate their security review with the confidence that they can achieve verification in the fastest possible time frame and at the lowest cost. 

“From the start, it was really easy to work with Nylas and Leviathan, a Google-certified security firm, to complete our OAuth Verification. Instead of wasting time identifying requirements, we received a clear list of criteria and didn’t need much onboarding to kick off the process.”

Results:

Saving Time and Money With Nylas + Leviathan

Thanks to the Nylas ESR, Harbor Plan achieved Google OAuth Verification in a fraction of the time it had taken the company previously. “We cut the time it took to finish the Google OAuth review by two months,” explains Carrington. “Between fewer revisions, reusing documents from previous certifications, and timely support from Nylas and Leviathan, we completed the review three times faster than before.” 

Plus, the company enjoyed a massive discount when compared to its first verification. “By choosing Nylas’ Express Security Review, we saved 40% from our first security review. And since our second review was quoted higher, we likely saved even more in costs that we can reinvest back in our business.”

All in all, Harbor Plan enjoyed a drastically more efficient, streamlined, and straightforward Google OAuth Verification process than before. “Having Nylas in our corner took the headache out of the review process and empowered us to achieve verification under budget and ahead of schedule.”

Nylas has Helped Thousands of Developers Complete Google OAuth Review in a Fraction of the Time & CostNow, Harbor Plan has the confidence to secure Google OAuth Verification quickly and efficiently to continue to provide safe and reliable email integrations to its users. “As our organization grows, we plan to continue to use Nylas ESR to streamline the Google OAuth review process and give our team much needed bandwidth to focus on building an even better product.” If you want to learn how to best prepare for Google OAuth Verification or more about Nylas Express Security Review, sign up to talk to one of our experts.