The Cleafy Playbook: Bridging the Gap Between Cybersecurity and Fraud Teams

Organizational silos can kill enterprise sales deals. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Cleafy CEO Matteo Bogana revealed how they turned this challenge into an opportunity.

The key insight? Traditional banks and modern fintechs approach security fundamentally differently. Banks maintain strict separation between fraud and cybersecurity teams. As Matteo explains, “There is usually a big separation between the fraud team and the cyber team, and there is a standard way of working in which usually the fraud team is more oriented on user behavior and transactional contents and information, while the application security is in the space of those guys that are managing the cyber and the web application firewalling.”

This division creates unique sales challenges. A solution that bridges these domains requires buy-in from multiple teams with different priorities and vocabularies.

Contrast this with fintechs, who “already have in place a mindset in which there are no silos and no barriers. There is no difference between cybersecurity, application security, fraud management and integrated financial risk.”

Rather than fighting organizational structure, Cleafy adapted their approach. For banks, they invested heavily in consensus building. “We spend really a lot of time in meetings and creating consensus and the trust with the first prospect customers before being able to start win the proper traction,” Matteo notes.

They also developed unique messaging for each audience. For fraud teams, they focus on user behavior and transaction monitoring. For security teams, they emphasize application protection and infrastructure security.

This dual-track approach enabled them to target “mid large banks and financial institutions… Fortune 500 customers for sure.” By understanding and respecting organizational boundaries while demonstrating value to each stakeholder, they successfully sell integrated solutions to siloed organizations.

Looking ahead, they see AI bridging these traditional divides. As Matteo explains, AI will help “reduce dramatically the workload for the fraud management team” while enabling “a more complex and interdisciplinary analysis on the attacks.”

The lesson? Sometimes the path to success isn’t fighting organizational structure, but understanding it deeply enough to navigate it effectively.