# Vanta

> Continuously pulls the state of the connected systems, checks it against the control catalogues of SOC 2, ISO 27001 and further frameworks, and files the evidence so that an auditor can accept it without an intermediate step.

- Vendor: Vanta, Inc., San Francisco, California, USA
- Canonical URL: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/vanta
- Language version: https://www.convios.com/de/werkzeugkasten/vanta
- Area: Governance & security · Cluster: evidence automation
- Role: Off-the-shelf product · Origin: Established, AI retrofitted
- As of: 2026-09-10 · Reviewed: 2026-09-10 · Author: Dr. Oliver Gausmann, Convios GmbH
- Toolbox: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox — Markdown: https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox.md

## Verdict

Prevents falling behind: A SOC 2 attestation wins no tender. Its absence loses one, because procurement's security questionnaire asks for it before anybody talks about what the product does. That places Vanta on the side of the tools that avert falling behind, and the vendor itself is interchangeable: Drata, Sprinto, Oneleet and Comp AI answer the same question. What separates Vanta from them is the number of auditors who accept the evidence out of the tool without further enquiry, and the public trust centre that shows the company's own evidence state outwards. Two things deserve scrutiny that appear on no feature list: the unbroken audit period that is lost on a switch, and the place where the pulled system states are held.

## Suitability by company size

- Solo: not suitable — Anybody working alone has neither a workforce whose access and training would need monitoring, nor the negotiating weight for a plan with no published price. An attestation may still be demanded, but in that case the question of an auditor comes before the question of a tool.
- Mid-market: suitable — This is where the use case sits. A company of twenty to two hundred people selling into corporates gets the security questionnaire on the table in the first conversation and has nobody to assemble the evidence by hand. On 10 September 2026 the pricing page lists four plans and, next to each, the instruction to request a quote; it names no amount anywhere. Sign-in through the company's own directory service and event logs already sit in the lowest plan, which is unusual in this class.
- Enterprise: suitable with caveats — The procurement checklist is served for the larger part: a data processing agreement public in full, forty-three sub-processors visible with their purpose, ISO 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 42001:2023 with a named scope, the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework officially listed as active. Two points remain and belong on the agenda. A storage location in the European Union is not on offer, because the data processing agreement names the United States as the place of primary processing. Automated user provisioning via SCIM and self-cut role permissions carry a surcharge from the third plan and are only included in the fourth. Anyone who has to keep holdings separate needs the workspaces on top, which also carry a surcharge.

## Vendor staying power

Funded: Founded in 2018 by the company's own account, and in July 2025 a round of 150 million US dollars led by Wellington Management at a stated valuation of 4.15 billion US dollars. The contract set is maintained: the master agreement carries 21 November 2025 and points to two earlier versions from the same year. More than 16,000 customers is the company's own figure. There is no evidence of profitability and no documented market entry more than seven years ago, which is why the classification here reads "funded" rather than "established".

- Legal entity and registered office: Vanta, Inc., 655 Montgomery Street, Suite 1600, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA; the data processing agreement states an official registration number as "N/A" (source: https://www.vanta.com/legal/dpa, as of 2026-09-10)
- Last reported equity round: 150 million US dollars led by Wellington Management, announced on 23 July 2025, at a stated valuation of 4.15 billion US dollars, with more than 12,000 customers by the company's own count (source: https://www.vanta.com/resources/vanta-announces-series-d, as of 2025-07-23)
- Maintenance state of the contract set: Master agreement last revised on 21 November 2025, with earlier versions of 8 September 2025 and 11 April 2025 kept on file; the information security addendum governs deletion periods, logging and audit rights in clauses of its own (source: https://www.vanta.com/legal/terms, as of 2025-11-21)
- Customer count, per the company: more than 16,000 companies, stated in the company's own trust centre (source: https://trust.vanta.com/, as of 2026-09-10)
- Documented incident and how it was handled: A code change deployed on 22 May 2025 caused one customer's data to appear in another customer's account. Vanta reverted the change on 27 May, completed remediation on 3 June and published a root cause analysis on 13 June 2025: fewer than four per cent of customers and fewer than twenty per cent of third-party integrations were affected, involving records on training, access, devices and vulnerabilities. Passwords, keys, financial and health data were not affected according to that analysis. (source: https://www.vanta.com/resources/rca-inc-868, as of 2025-06-13)
- Commitment kept after the incident: The third-party review promised in the root cause analysis did take place: Trail of Bits examined the source code for six weeks from November to December 2025, aimed specifically at cross-tenant data access. The report sits in the trust centre and is viewable after an access request. (source: https://trust.vanta.com/, as of 2026-09-10)

## Cost of leaving

High: The data comes out. Policies, controls and collected evidence can be retrieved through the interface, and auditors get an interface of their own as early as the lowest plan. What the export does not carry is the reason the tool was bought. A SOC 2 Type 2 attestation certifies that controls were effective over a period, customarily six to twelve months. That chain is produced by the continuous monitoring inside the tool, and at a new vendor it starts from the beginning. Anyone switching mid-period explains to the auditor a gap in precisely the evidence they want to present. On top comes the wiring: state is pulled from the company's own systems, and every one of those connections is set up and authorised again at the new vendor. The favourable moment for a switch therefore falls immediately after a completed audit period, and there is only one of those a year.

## Regulation and data

| Point | Finding | Evidence | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data processing agreement | public in full, but effective only after separate execution — The agreement sits on the website without any login and supplements the master agreement; Vanta acts as processor within it, the customer as controller or as processor depending on the situation. Unlike vendors who declare their data processing agreement an automatic part of the master agreement, this one has to be executed: the instruction in the first paragraph routes through a form at the service provider Ironclad, filled in by the customer's authorised signer, after which both sides receive a signed copy. Having read it is some way from having concluded it. Procurement should ask here, because reviewing the text and concluding it come apart. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-10 |
| Storage location | United States as the place of primary processing, no choice of an EU region — Clause 6.1 of the data processing agreement records that primary processing takes place in the United States and that transfer there is necessary for the service. The information security addendum names Amazon Web Services as the data centre operator without naming a region. The sub-processor list in the trust centre carries "US, EU or AUS" for Amazon Web Services and MongoDB and "US, EU" for Cloudflare, which describes where those providers may sit. No customer-side choice of region appears in any of the public documents, and a search for a commitment to hold data in the European Union returns nothing across the entire site index of 3,203 addresses. For the file it is therefore the contract text that counts: United States. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-10 |
| Subprocessors | 43 recipients public with purpose, the country missing for the majority — The list in the trust centre is visible without login and without an access request and assigns every recipient to a group: core product, Vanta AI, analytics, support and account management. The openness on the AI services is notable. Twelve recipients are named there, among them OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Microsoft, Cohere, Langchain with its Langsmith product, Browserbase, e2b and Lakera. The gap is equally notable: only three entries carry a processing country, namely Amazon Web Services, MongoDB and Cloudflare. For all twelve AI services the field stays empty. On top comes a contradiction inside the data processing agreement itself, which names the list at trust.vanta.com in clause 4.2 and at www.vanta.com in Exhibit B; both addresses respond, but they lead to two separate renderings. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-10 |
| Third-country transfer | EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework officially active, plus standard contractual clauses in the contract — Both are documented and sit on top of one another. The participant list maintained by the US Department of Commerce shows Vanta as active on 10 September 2026 in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, in the Swiss framework and in the UK extension, for HR data and for non-HR data alike. Independently of that, clause 6 of the data processing agreement carries the European Commission's standard contractual clauses under Module 2 and Module 3, with Irish law and Irish jurisdiction, and Exhibit D holds the United Kingdom transfer addendum. The privacy notice additionally names the Irish Data Protection Commissioner as lead supervisory authority in the European Union. A legal notice or a named European establishment, by contrast, does not appear in the site index. | evidenced | 2026-09-10 |
| Training on customer data | training on customer content excluded in the contract, including for third parties — The commitment sits in the master agreement rather than on a documentation page, which is what makes the difference. Clause 4.6.1 states that Vanta will not use customer content to train models and will not permit any third party to do so either. That is the extension that matters, because the sub-processor list names twelve AI services. Two classes are excluded from the commitment, and expressly so: the user's feedback on a suggestion, and usage data. Vanta may use both to improve its own AI features. The same clause records that the AI features are voluntary, that the product gives notice before their first use, and that an administrator can switch them off for every authorised user in the company. | evidenced | 2025-11-21 |
| Retention and deletion | 30 days on request, 365 days without one, backup copies excluded — The periods are stated as figures in clause 9 of the information security addendum. On request Vanta deletes customer content within thirty days; without a request the customer's instance is expunged within three hundred and sixty-five days of the subscription ending. Anyone who does nothing therefore leaves their evidence on training, access and devices with a vendor for a year after the contract has gone. The passage that follows expressly excludes backup and archival copies to the extent retention is legally required; such holdings are to be separated from further processing and deleted in the ordinary course. Written confirmation of destruction is available on request. For the data protection officer's file this means: termination alone is not enough, the deletion request belongs beside it. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-10 |
| Certifications | six attestations with standard version and scope, certificates after an access request — This is the densest body of evidence in the whole catalogue, and that belongs to the business model: a vendor selling evidence management runs its own portal as a shop window. Named are ISO 27001:2022, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, ISO/IEC 27017:2015, ISO/IEC 27018:2019, ISO/IEC 42001:2023, a SOC 2 Type 2 attestation covering security, availability, confidentiality and processing integrity, and a FedRAMP 20x authorisation at the Low level. The scopes are stated alongside: the ISO 27001 certification covers the platform together with the additional control sets of the three accompanying standards. Next to those the portal holds the summary of a Doyensec penetration test from October 2025 and a data protection impact assessment. The certificates themselves sit behind an access request, which adds one step to the review in procurement and does not weaken the statement. | evidenced | 2026-09-10 |
| EU AI Act, Article 50 | ISO/IEC 42001:2023 in the role of AI provider, labelling duty anchored in the contract — Vanta classifies its own duties expressly, and does so in two places. The scope of the ISO/IEC 42001:2023 certification names the AI management system behind the platform and the role "AI producer and AI product / service provider", which fixes the vendor role instead of leaving it open. The master agreement goes a step further in clause 4.6.2 and forbids the customer from representing AI outputs as human generated. With that the vendor gives the deployer exactly the basis needed for labelling under Article 50 of the regulation. What remains is that classifying one's own deployment sits with the deployer, because the AI features produce policy texts and questionnaire answers that subsequently go outwards. | evidenced | 2026-09-10 |
| Audit logging | event logs in all four plans, scope and period publicly open — It pays to separate two things here that easily run into each other. Documented at length is the logging Vanta runs for itself: clause 20 of the information security addendum states that audit records are kept for all systems and that privileged actions are tied to a named individual, and clause 15 gives a retention of at least one year for intrusion detection logs. That is the vendor's own responsibility. What the customer gets inside the product sits separately from this and thinner: on 10 September 2026 the pricing page lists event logs as included in all four plans, which defuses a customary point of dispute. Which events are captured, how long they stay in the tool and whether they can be exported into the customer's own analysis system is not stated in the public documents. Anyone who has to plan evidence duties settles that before signing. | partially evidenced | 2026-09-10 |

## Cost

- Entry: On 10 September 2026 the pricing page lists four plans named Essentials, Plus, Professional and Enterprise and, next to each, the instruction to book a demonstration and receive a quote cut to the company. It names no amount anywhere, no entry price and no minimum commitment. For a vendor whose product is the disclosure of its own state, that stands out. (as of 2026-09-10)
- Where it gets expensive: Two thresholds sit in the way, and they hit different companies. The first is questionnaire automation, which covers twenty-five questionnaires a year in the second plan and one hundred and forty-four in the third. Anyone selling into corporates counts here and easily lands at the upper end. The second threshold concerns user administration: automated provisioning via SCIM and self-cut role permissions carry a surcharge in the third plan and are only included in the fourth, and separate workspaces for several legal entities carry a surcharge in both. Sign-in through the company's own directory service, pre-built role permissions and event logs, by contrast, sit in all four plans, which removes the corporate objection customary in this class. No amounts can be named for either threshold, because the vendor publishes none.

## Three routes compared

### The risk suite operations already hang off

Archer and ServiceNow serve the same duty from the other direction. At Archer, compliance management, IT and security risk, audit management, third parties and, more recently, AI governance sit under one roof, and a price is as absent from public view there as it is at Vanta. Corporates stay with them because the risk register hangs off operational processes and the configuration database, and because one register is less to audit than two. Anyone pulling certification evidence out of that bracket runs their controls in two places from then on and has to explain which of the two prevails in case of doubt. What these suites do not bring is the continuous pull from development and cloud systems that Vanta gets bought for.

### Audit agents, open to read

The young class promises to shorten the road to an attestation from months to days, and works with audit agents to do it. Comp AI, offered by Bubba AI, Inc., lays its whole substance open in the process: every agent, every integration and every check sit openly on GitHub by its own account, and the frameworks named are SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, the General Data Protection Regulation and FedRAMP. Oneleet, alongside, builds on a tighter meshing of tool and audit and carries SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, DORA and NIST 800-171. A price difference cannot be quantified in either direction, because on 10 September 2026 Oneleet names no amount either and grounds that in its dependence on what the customer needs. Two things have to be given up that procurement asks about: the number of auditors who take the evidence without further enquiry, and the depth of the vendor’s own evidence state, as Vanta presents it with six named standards and a public portal.

### n8n pulls, GitHub versions, Linear runs the deadlines

The technology behind it is manageable, and that is the trap. With n8n from this catalogue, state is pulled daily from GitHub, the directory service, cloud administration and Personio; GitHub or GitLab hold policies and evidence under version control; Linear runs measures with an owner and a deadline; GitBook publishes the policies for the workforce; Credo AI from this catalogue carries the model register for ISO/IEC 42001, and Nudge Security the inventory of the services actually in use. Reckoned at fifteen person-days at a 1,200 euro day rate, the build costs roughly 18,000 euros, plus around 500 euros of infrastructure a year. Failure comes at three other places. First at the auditor. They buy no software, they sign off an audit trail, and must be able to follow that a piece of evidence looked exactly so on the cut-off date, and a self-built chain without immutability does not give them that. Second at maintenance: Annex A of ISO 27001 was recut in 2022, and anyone running the catalogue themselves pulls every standard version across by hand. Third at the builder's departure, because the evidence chain runs on while nobody knows any more why a query was built one way and not another. For a company needing an attestation once, building it is bearable. For one presenting it every year, it stops being bearable in the second year.

Recommendation by size:

- Solo: Leave it until a customer demands an attestation; then look for an auditor first, not for a tool.
- Mid-market: Buy it, but count the questionnaires per year beforehand and negotiate them into the same quote.
- Enterprise: Settle two points before signing: log export, and where the pulled system states are held.

## Context

- Implements method: [Regulatory Density Test](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/regulatory-density-test) — The test separates a rule that hits everyone alike from one that hits this company in particular, and a SOC 2 attestation reliably lands in the first group when the question is played through.
- Implements method: ["Context: Moat or Wall?" Test](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/context-moat-or-wall-test) — Bought evidence management stays purchasable, and the question of whether a capability grows with use is what decides the verdict here between an edge and merely averting a lag.
- Implements method: [Minimizing Need-to-Believes](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/need-to-believes) — The product is the reduction of assumptions a buyer must accept on trust about the vendor's own security, and counting the open points in an offer is exactly what the method does.
- Implements method: [Operating Model Grid (Standardization and Integration)](https://www.convios.com/en/methods/operating-model-raster) — Anyone running several legal entities or holdings under one roof needs to know before signing how much process uniformity is wanted, because separate workspaces carry a surcharge here in two of the four plans.
- Alternative: [Credo AI](https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/credo-ai)
- Alternative: [Nudge Security](https://www.convios.com/en/toolbox/nudge-security)
- Displaces: The spreadsheet in which a consultant assembles the evidence by hand four weeks before the audit, The folder of screenshots meant to prove that a setting was correct back in the spring, The week a salesperson spends on a corporate procurement security questionnaire

## Evidence

- The processor role, execution of the data processing agreement through a form at the service provider Ironclad, the United States as the place of primary processing, standard contractual clauses under Modules 2 and 3 with Irish law, the United Kingdom transfer addendum as Exhibit D, the registered office and the "N/A" entry for the registration number — https://www.vanta.com/legal/dpa (as of 2026-09-10)
- The exclusion of training on customer content including its extension to third parties, the exception for feedback and usage data, the ability of an administrator to switch the AI features off, the prohibition on representing AI outputs as human generated, and the master agreement dated 21 November 2025 — https://www.vanta.com/legal/terms (as of 2025-11-21)
- Deletion within thirty days on request and within three hundred and sixty-five days without one, the exception for backup and archival copies, Amazon Web Services as data centre operator with no region stated, retention of intrusion detection logs of at least one year, and the attribution of privileged actions to named individuals — https://www.vanta.com/legal/information-security-addendum (as of 2026-09-10)
- Forty-three sub-processors with purpose and group, among them twelve named AI services, and the absence of a country entry for every record other than Amazon Web Services, MongoDB and Cloudflare — https://trust.vanta.com/subprocessors (as of 2026-09-10)
- ISO 27001:2022, ISO/IEC 27701:2019, ISO/IEC 27017:2015, ISO/IEC 27018:2019, ISO/IEC 42001:2023 with its scope in the role of AI provider, a SOC 2 Type 2 attestation, a FedRAMP 20x Low authorisation, a Doyensec penetration test from October 2025, a Trail of Bits source code review from November to December 2025 on cross-tenant access, and a customer count above 16,000 — https://trust.vanta.com/ (as of 2026-09-10)
- Four plans with no published amount, sign-in through the company's own directory service, pre-built role permissions and event logs in all four plans, SCIM and self-cut role permissions as a surcharge in the third plan and only included in the fourth, separate workspaces as a surcharge in two plans, and questionnaire automation covering twenty-five and one hundred and forty-four questionnaires a year respectively — https://www.vanta.com/pricing (as of 2026-09-10)
- Active participation in the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, the Swiss framework and the UK extension, in each case for HR data and non-HR data, as listed by the US Department of Commerce — https://www.dataprivacyframework.gov/list (as of 2026-09-10)
- The timeline, scope and cause of the cross-tenant data access of May 2025, including the promised remedial measures — https://www.vanta.com/resources/rca-inc-868 (as of 2025-06-13)
- The equity round of 150 million US dollars led by Wellington Management at a stated valuation of 4.15 billion US dollars, plus founding year and customer count by the company's own account — https://www.vanta.com/resources/vanta-announces-series-d (as of 2025-07-23)
- The Irish Data Protection Commissioner as lead supervisory authority in the European Union and participation in the Data Privacy Framework by the company's own account — https://www.vanta.com/legal/privacy (as of 2026-09-10)
- The application areas of the established counterpart from compliance management to AI governance and the absence of a public price — https://www.archerirm.com/ (as of 2026-09-10)
- The open-source nature of agents, integrations and checks at the AI-native counterpart, the provider Bubba AI, Inc., and the frameworks named — https://www.trycomp.ai/ (as of 2026-09-10)
- The absence of a price at the second AI-native counterpart including its stated reason, and the frameworks carried there — https://www.oneleet.com/pricing (as of 2026-09-10)