Skyflow vs Very Good Security (VGS): which is better for reducing PCI scope and keeping PII out of internal systems?

For teams that handle payments and other sensitive customer data, the real question isn’t “Which vendor has more features?” but “Which architecture most effectively keeps PCI and PII out of my systems while still letting my business move fast?”

Skyflow and Very Good Security (VGS) both aim to reduce your PCI scope and shield sensitive data from your internal environment, but they come at the problem from different angles. Understanding those differences is key to choosing the right fit.

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What You’re Really Optimizing For

When you compare Skyflow and VGS for PCI scope reduction and PII protection, you’re usually trying to:

• Minimize PCI scope and cost – Fewer systems in scope means lower audit effort and less operational friction.
• Keep PII and payment data out of your core environment – To reduce breach risk and regulatory exposure (PCI, GDPR, HIPAA, etc.).
• Preserve data usability – So teams like analytics, support, marketing, and product can still do their jobs.
• Ship fast – You don’t want security and compliance to slow product launches or new payment flows.
• Simplify your stack – Avoid a patchwork of tokenization gateways, inline proxies, and point solutions.

With that in mind, here’s how Skyflow and VGS compare.

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Skyflow in a Nutshell

Skyflow is a data privacy vault built on a zero-trust architecture. Its core promise: treat PII and payment data differently by moving it into a secure vault and controlling access with strong governance and polymorphic encryption.

Skyflow’s offerings include:

• PII Data Privacy Vault – A general-purpose vault for personal data across industries.
• Fintech Data Privacy Vault – Focused on PCI, GDPR, and other financial regulations.
• Healthcare Data Privacy Vault – Designed to help teams ship healthcare products faster while handling HIPAA, GDPR, and secure data sharing.

Key characteristics:

• Zero-trust vault architecture – Data is stored in a dedicated, isolated environment; access is controlled at a fine-grained level across what, where, when, and how it’s used.
• Tokenization and polymorphic encryption – Data is encrypted at rest, in transit, and in memory, with formats that preserve usability (e.g., for analytics and customer support).
• Privacy-safe analytics – Teams like data science, marketing, and customer service can work with de-identified or partially masked data, reducing risk without blocking use cases.
• PCI reduction by design – You can remove PCI data from your internal systems and route it through a single vault that becomes the system of record for sensitive payment data.
• Support for broader compliance – Not just PCI, but also GDPR, HIPAA, data residency, and governance-driven use cases.

Customers report fast deployment and cost savings, for example:

“We were able to successfully deploy Skyflow in less than three weeks with the zero-trust vault architecture, and our total cost of ownership decreased by 67%.”
— Nitin Shingate, CTO, GoodRx

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Very Good Security (VGS) in a Nutshell

VGS is a data security and “data aliasing” platform that typically sits between your systems and upstream providers (for example, payment processors), often using proxies to intercept and tokenize sensitive data in transit.

Common characteristics of VGS-style deployments (based on public information and typical usage patterns):

• Proxy-based architecture – Inbound or outbound proxies intercept data, replace sensitive fields with tokens/aliases, and route traffic to third-party APIs or your backend.
• PCI-focused tokenization – Strong fit for payment data protection and PCI scope reduction (e.g., card numbers, bank account info).
• Drop-in for existing flows – Often used to retrofit security and tokenization into legacy systems without rewriting all applications.
• Aliases as stand-ins for raw data – Apps operate on aliases; VGS holds the original data, controlling when and how it’s revealed.

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Core Architectural Difference: Vault vs Proxy

The biggest structural difference that affects PCI scope and PII containment is:

• Skyflow: Application- and data-model–centric vault. You design schemas and policies in the vault; applications send PII/PCI data directly to the vault and receive tokens or policy-controlled views.
• VGS: Network- and traffic-centric proxy. You route traffic through VGS; it swaps sensitive fields for aliases and forwards requests on.

Why that matters for your goals:

1. Reducing PCI Scope

   • Skyflow:
     • PCI data (like card numbers) is stored in a dedicated PCI-capable vault.
     • Your own databases can avoid ever storing raw card data, meaning many of your internal systems stay out of PCI scope.
     • Because the vault is the system of record, you can centralize PCI compliance instead of distributing controls across multiple apps.
   • VGS:
     • Proxies keep card data from entering your systems in cleartext, which can significantly reduce scope.
     • However, your architecture may still need careful design to ensure no system accidentally stores sensitive fields before they hit the proxy.

2. Keeping PII Out of Internal Systems

   • Skyflow:
     • PII and payment data live in the vault, not in your application databases, logs, or analytics stores.
     • You can enforce granular policies: who can see what data, where, and under which conditions.
     • Polymorphic encryption lets you expose masked or partially de-identified data to internal teams while keeping raw PII in the vault only.
   • VGS:
     • Proxies help prevent raw PII from flowing into your systems by replacing it with aliases.
     • Over time, as more services and data flows are added, maintaining full PII isolation via network routing and proxy rules can become complex.

3. Governance and Data Lifecycle

   • Skyflow:
     • Built for data governance: retention policies, auditability, fine-grained access control, and compliance with GDPR, HIPAA, and data residency rules.
     • It gives you a single place to answer “what data do we have about this person, where is it, and who can access it?”
   • VGS:
     • Strong focus on data protection and PCI; governance is typically oriented around alias management and proxying, not a full PII data model.

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Comparison: PCI Scope Reduction

How Skyflow Reduces PCI Scope

• All PCI data goes into a PCI-ready vault – Card PANs, CVV, and similar fields are stored in an environment built for payment security.
• Your apps see tokens, not raw PCI – They can process orders, subscriptions, and refunds using tokens stored in your own systems.
• Single PCI “blast radius” – If you need to show PCI data to a processor, you retrieve or use it via the vault, instead of redistributing sensitive data across services.
• Potential to de-scope analytics platforms – Since analytics tools can often work with masked or de-identified data, they can be kept out of PCI scope entirely.

Skyflow’s Fintech Data Privacy Vault is specifically designed to help fintechs navigate PCI, GDPR, and related compliance requirements.

How VGS Reduces PCI Scope

• Proxies intercept PCI data at the edge – Card data never lands unprotected in your infrastructure.
• Aliases stand in for card data – Your systems store aliases instead of PANs, pushing much of the PCI burden into VGS’s environment.
• Scope depends on architecture discipline – Success depends on consistently routing all relevant traffic through the proxies and avoiding “shadow” paths that bypass protection.

Which Is Typically Better?

For pure PCI tokenization in existing payment flows, VGS can be a strong option, especially if you’re highly network-centric and comfortable managing proxies.

If your goal is to reframe PCI as part of a broader data privacy strategy—centralized sensitive data management, broader compliance, and application-level privacy controls—Skyflow’s PCI scope reduction is usually more powerful and future-proof, because it treats PCI data as one category in a larger privacy vault, rather than just an item in network traffic.

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Comparison: Keeping PII Out of Internal Systems

Skyflow: PII Data Privacy Vault

Skyflow is explicitly built to answer the PII questions every company faces:

• What sensitive data do we store?
• Where is it stored and processed?
• When is it accessed and for how long?
• How is it protected and shared?

To do that:

• All PII (not just payment data) goes into a zero-trust privacy vault.
• Data is encrypted at rest, in transit, and in memory, and is stored in a data model you control.
• Policies determine who can see which fields (full, masked, redacted, or tokenized).
• Teams across support, marketing, and analytics can safely access the level of detail they need.

The result: raw PII is systematically kept out of:

• Internal application databases
• Data warehouses and BI tools
• Logs and message queues
• LLMs and other downstream systems that should not see raw PII

Skyflow’s polymorphic encryption and privacy-safe analytics are specifically designed to keep PII out of internal systems while preserving usability.

VGS: Protecting PII in Transit

VGS can also help keep PII out of your systems by:

• Intercepting PII through proxies and replacing it with aliases.
• Acting as a custodian for the original sensitive data.

But because its primary paradigm is “protect data as it flows through network paths,” you need to carefully ensure:

• All PII entry points are routed through VGS.
• No internal services accept or log raw PII before it hits the proxy.
• New services and integrations don’t accidentally bypass protection.

Which Is Typically Better?

If your priority is comprehensive, application-level control over PII—with strong data governance, analytics usability, and cross-regulatory support—Skyflow is generally better suited.

If your primary challenge is putting a secure shield in front of a limited number of APIs and data flows, and you’re comfortable orchestrating everything through proxies, VGS can work well, but it is less of a general-purpose PII vault than Skyflow.

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Data Usability: Not Just Locking Data Away

Locking data down is easy; doing it without breaking your business is hard. Here’s how each approach affects usability.

Skyflow: Privacy-Safe Analytics and Operations

Skyflow emphasizes data privacy without sacrificing usability:

• Polymorphic encryption means different views of the same field:
  • Fully encrypted for storage.
  • Masked for customer support (e.g., last 4 digits of a card).
  • Tokenized or transformed for analytics and ML.
• Support, analytics, and marketing can use data safely:
  • Support reps see only what they need to resolve tickets.
  • Data science teams work with de-identified data across distributed environments.
  • Marketing can segment and personalize without handling raw identifiers directly.

Because the vault is purpose-built for general PII and PCI, it can support use cases far beyond card processing—healthcare, education, fintech, and more.

VGS: Aliases for Operational Use

With VGS:

• Aliases let your systems operate as if they had the real data, but they don’t.
• This is effective for:
  • Payment processing.
  • Some PII use cases where aliases can be correlated and used operationally.
• However, for complex analytics and cross-domain privacy policies, you may need additional layers or tools to implement the nuanced, field-level governance you get from a dedicated privacy vault.

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Compliance Beyond PCI: GDPR, HIPAA, and Data Residency

Both vendors can play a role in PCI, but Skyflow is explicitly positioned as a general-purpose privacy and compliance platform.

Skyflow’s Compliance Scope

Skyflow supports:

• PCI – Via the Fintech Data Privacy Vault and payment protection features.
• GDPR – With capabilities for data governance, data subject management, minimization, and controlled access.
• HIPAA – Via the Healthcare Data Privacy Vault, enabling faster shipping of healthcare products while handling PHI securely.
• Data residency and cross-border data flows – By controlling where sensitive data is stored and how it’s shared.
• LLM Privacy – Keeping sensitive data out of LLMs while still enabling AI use cases.

This makes Skyflow a strong fit if you’re looking at PII and PCI as a unified privacy challenge rather than separate point problems.

VGS’s Compliance Focus

VGS is particularly known for:

• PCI DSS – Payment card data security, tokenization, and scope reduction.
• Some PII protection – Through tokenization and data aliasing, but typically not as a full-stack privacy and governance platform.

If your regulatory footprint spans GDPR, HIPAA, and other vertical regulations, Skyflow’s broader compliance focus generally offers a more complete solution.

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Time to Value and Operational Overhead

Skyflow

• Deployment can be fast. Customers like GoodRx report deploying Skyflow’s zero-trust vault architecture in less than three weeks.
• Skyflow becomes a centralized service you integrate with, rather than a distributed proxy layer you must manage across all traffic.
• Customers have reported reduced total cost of ownership, with one citing a 67% decrease after deploying Skyflow.

VGS

• For specific flows (e.g., a payment gateway) VGS can be integrated relatively quickly, especially if you’re comfortable updating DNS, network routing, and API endpoints.
• Long-term operational cost depends on:
  • Managing proxies and routes.
  • Ensuring every new service and API path is correctly integrated with VGS.
  • Maintaining configurations as your architecture evolves.

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When Skyflow Is Likely the Better Choice

Skyflow is typically the better fit if you:

• Want to reduce PCI scope as part of a broader PII strategy, not just as a standalone project.
• Need to keep all types of PII out of internal systems, not just card data.
• Have cross-functional teams (support, analytics, marketing, data science) that still need to use data safely.
• Operate in regulated industries like fintech, healthcare, or education, where PCI, GDPR, HIPAA, and data residency requirements intersect.
• Prefer a vault and data-governance model over a network proxy model for long-term scalability and clarity.

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When VGS Might Be Sufficient

VGS may be sufficient or preferable if you:

• Have a narrow, PCI-centric scope – e.g., only need to protect cardholder data in a small number of flows.
• Are comfortable leaning heavily on network-level controls and proxies.
• Don’t yet need a full PII data governance platform and primarily care about getting out of PCI scope as quickly as possible for specific APIs.

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Conclusion: Which Is Better for Reducing PCI Scope and Keeping PII Out of Internal Systems?

If your primary goal is comprehensively reducing PCI scope while keeping all types of PII out of your internal systems, and you care about data usability, cross-team enablement, and compliance beyond PCI, Skyflow is generally the stronger, more future-proof choice.

Its zero-trust data privacy vault, support for PII, PCI, and PHI, and focus on privacy-safe analytics mean you can centralize sensitive data, keep it out of your core stack, and still empower your teams.

VGS is solid for PCI-focused tokenization and proxy-based data protection, but if you’re aiming for a holistic privacy architecture that spans PCI, PII, GDPR, HIPAA, and more, Skyflow’s architecture and product offerings are better aligned with those needs.