What Does Vanta Do? A Complete Guide to the Compliance Automation Platform

Vanta is one of the first platforms we configure when we bring a client into a compliance program, and "what does Vanta do?" is one of the most common questions we hear before that work begins. This guide answers it completely — what the platform actually does, how it works, what it does not do, and how we use it as the number one Vanta partner globally to get clients live and audit-ready faster than they can on their own.

What does Vanta do? Vanta is a compliance automation platform that connects to your cloud infrastructure, identity provider, and business tools to continuously collect audit evidence, monitor your security controls, and manage frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR. Instead of chasing screenshots and spreadsheets before every audit, your evidence is gathered automatically and any control that drifts out of compliance is flagged the moment it happens.

That is the short answer. The rest of this guide goes deeper than any single product page, because the real question behind "what does Vanta do" is usually "what will Vanta do for my company — and what still needs a human?" At Agency, we work inside Vanta every day across our client base, so we will be specific about both.

What Is Vanta?

Vanta is a GRC platform — governance, risk, and compliance software — founded in 2018 and headquartered in San Francisco. It pioneered the category now known as compliance automation or continuous compliance, and it is one of the most widely adopted platforms in the space, used by tens of thousands of companies ranging from early-stage startups to large enterprises.

The category matters because it explains what Vanta is for. Before tools like Vanta existed, getting a SOC 2 report meant months of manual work: a compliance lead would email engineers asking for screenshots of cloud configurations, export user lists from various systems, drop everything into spreadsheets, and assemble a binder of evidence for the auditor. The whole thing was a point-in-time scramble that went stale the day after the audit closed.

Vanta's core idea is to replace that manual evidence-gathering with software. It plugs into the systems where the evidence actually lives — your AWS account, your Google Workspace, your HR system, your code repositories — reads the relevant configuration and access data automatically, maps it to the requirements of whatever framework you are pursuing, and keeps watching continuously rather than once a year.

When people search for "Vanta software," "Vanta GRC," or "what does Vanta mean," this is the answer: it is the system of record for your security and compliance posture, and the engine that keeps that posture continuously evidenced.

What Does Vanta Do? The Core Functions

Vanta bundles a lot of capability under the "compliance automation" label. Here is what it actually does, function by function.

Automated Evidence Collection

This is the heart of the platform. Vanta connects to your tools and automatically pulls the evidence auditors require — encryption settings, access logs, backup configurations, MFA enforcement, employee onboarding records, and hundreds of other data points. What used to be a manual screenshot exercise becomes an automated data feed. When an auditor asks "show me that production databases are encrypted at rest," the evidence is already collected, timestamped, and organized in Vanta.

Continuous Control Monitoring

Vanta doesn't just collect evidence once — it monitors your controls continuously and tells you the moment something falls out of compliance. If an engineer spins up a new server without disk encryption, disables MFA on an account, or a security policy goes unacknowledged, Vanta flags the failing control and shows you exactly what needs to be fixed. This is the "continuous compliance" promise: your posture is always current, not just accurate on audit day.

400+ Integrations

Vanta connects to 400+ tools out of the box — AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, GitHub, Okta, Google Workspace, Jira, and the rest of a typical cloud stack — plus an API for custom integrations. These integrations are how Vanta collects evidence without manual effort. The depth of the integration library is one of the reasons the platform scales well: the more of your stack Vanta can read directly, the less anyone has to gather by hand. (For a detailed walkthrough of one of the most important connections, see our Vanta + AWS integration setup guide.)

Policy and Document Management

Every framework requires a set of written policies — information security, access control, incident response, business continuity, and more. Vanta provides policy templates, tracks employee acknowledgment of those policies, and stores the documentation auditors will ask to see. It turns policy management from a folder of stale Word documents into a tracked, versioned, auditable process.

Risk Management and Risk Assessments

Vanta includes a risk management module for documenting, scoring, and tracking risks, and for running the formal risk assessments that frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 require. Risks can be linked to the controls that mitigate them, giving you a defensible, auditable risk register rather than a one-off spreadsheet.

Vendor and Third-Party Risk Management

Modern frameworks expect you to manage the security of your vendors, not just your own systems. Vanta's vendor risk management lets you inventory your third parties, run security reviews, and monitor vendor risk in one place — automating a workload that otherwise eats up a compliance team's time.

Access Reviews

Frameworks require periodic proof that the right people — and only the right people — have access to sensitive systems. Vanta automates access reviews, pulling user and permission data from your connected systems so you can review and attest to access on a schedule, with the evidence captured automatically.

Trust Center

Vanta's Trust Center is a public-facing page that showcases your security and compliance posture in real time — your certifications, your policies, and your live control status. Instead of emailing your SOC 2 report to every prospect under NDA, you point them to your Trust Center. For companies that sell to security-conscious buyers, this turns compliance into a sales asset rather than a back-office cost.

Vanta AI

Vanta has layered AI across the platform through the Vanta AI Agent, positioned as a "24/7 GRC engineering team." It drafts policies, completes security questionnaires automatically (Vanta cites customers automating the large majority of their questionnaire responses), and helps identify and triage issues. This is the newest frontier of what Vanta does — using AI to take on the judgment-light, high-volume work that used to consume compliance teams.

How Does Vanta Work?

Knowing the features is one thing; understanding the workflow is what most people are really after when they ask how Vanta works. Here is the end-to-end flow we run with every client.

1. Connect your systems. You authorize Vanta to read from your cloud providers, identity provider, HR system, code repositories, and other tools through its integrations. This is the foundation — the more you connect, the more Vanta can automate.
2. Select your framework(s). You tell Vanta which standards you are pursuing — SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and so on. Vanta loads the corresponding control set.
3. Map controls to evidence. Vanta maps each framework requirement to the evidence it can collect from your connected systems, then shows you a dashboard of which controls are passing and which need work.
4. Remediate the gaps. For every failing control, Vanta tells you what is wrong. Someone then has to actually fix it — enable encryption, enforce MFA, write the missing policy. (This is where a partner earns its keep; more on that below.)
5. Monitor continuously. Once controls are passing, Vanta keeps watching. If anything drifts, you are alerted immediately, so you stay audit-ready year-round rather than re-scrambling annually.
6. Hand evidence to the auditor. When it is time for the audit, Vanta packages your organized, timestamped evidence for an independent auditor — often with auditor access built directly into the platform — to review and issue the report.

The crucial thing to understand: Vanta automates steps 1, 3, 5, and most of 6. Steps 2 and 4 — scoping the program correctly and actually remediating findings — still require human expertise. That distinction is the whole reason partners exist.

What Frameworks Does Vanta Support?

Vanta supports 20+ frameworks and standards, and lets you build custom ones. Because controls can be shared across frameworks, evidence you collect for one standard often satisfies requirements in another — which is what makes Vanta efficient for companies pursuing several frameworks at once.

Framework	Common Use Case
SOC 2	The default trust standard for US SaaS and B2B software companies
ISO 27001 / ISO 42001	International information security; ISO 42001 for AI management systems
HIPAA	Healthcare and any company handling protected health information
GDPR	Companies processing data of EU residents
PCI DSS	Companies handling payment card data
HITRUST	Healthcare and high-assurance environments
NIST AI RMF / EU AI Act	Organizations building or deploying AI systems
CMMC	Defense contractors in the US supply chain
FedRAMP	Vendors selling cloud services to US federal agencies
DORA / NIS2 / Cyber Essentials	EU and UK regulatory and resilience requirements
Custom frameworks	Internal standards or customer-specific control sets

Two of the most common questions — "is Vanta a SOC 2 tool?" and "does Vanta do SOC 2 compliance?" — are answered here: SOC 2 is the most popular use case, but it is one of many. If you are new to SOC 2 itself, start with our complete guide on what SOC 2 is and how to get it.

What Vanta Does Not Do

This is the section most articles skip, and it is the most important one — because the gap between what Vanta does and what compliance actually requires is exactly where programs stall. Vanta is excellent software, but it is software. It does not do the following:

• Vanta does not perform your audit. It is not a CPA firm or a certification body. An independent auditor still has to assess your evidence and issue the SOC 2 report or ISO 27001 certificate. Vanta gets you ready; it does not sign off.
• Vanta does not scope your program. It loads a generic control set. Deciding which systems are in scope, which Trust Services Criteria apply, and how to right-size the program for your business is a judgment call the platform cannot make for you — and getting it wrong means either over-building or failing the audit.
• Vanta does not write your policies for you. It provides templates. Turning a template into a policy that reflects how your company actually operates — and that you can defend to an auditor — still takes work.
• Vanta does not remediate findings. It tells you a control is failing. Someone with the right access and expertise has to actually fix the underlying issue, often deep in your cloud configuration.
• Vanta does not manage the auditor relationship. Selecting a reputable auditor, managing the engagement, answering follow-up questions, and pushing the report across the finish line is on you.
• Vanta does not make you secure. Passing controls is not the same as being defended against real threats. As we wrote in our CrowdStrike partnership announcement, the gap between being technically compliant and being genuinely secure is the most dangerous place a company can sit.

None of this is a criticism of Vanta — it is the correct division of labor. Vanta automates the mechanical work so that human expertise can go where it is actually needed. The companies that struggle are the ones who buy Vanta expecting it to be their compliance program rather than power it.

Who Uses Vanta — and Who It's Right For

Vanta is a strong fit for:

• Cloud-native startups and scale-ups pursuing their first SOC 2 because a customer or investor is demanding it.
• B2B SaaS companies where security questionnaires and a Trust Center directly unblock sales.
• Companies pursuing multiple frameworks at once, who benefit from shared controls and a single source of truth.
• Lean teams without a dedicated GRC function, who need automation to make compliance feasible at all.

It is less essential — though still useful — for very large enterprises with mature, heavily customized GRC tooling already in place, or for organizations whose compliance obligations are minimal. The platform shines when you have a real cloud stack to monitor and a genuine deadline to hit.

How Much Does Vanta Cost?

Like most enterprise GRC platforms, Vanta uses quote-based pricing rather than publishing fixed rates. Cost scales primarily with employee headcount, the number of frameworks you pursue, and add-on features like advanced Trust Center capabilities or vendor risk management. Most organizations land in the low-to-mid five figures annually for a single framework, rising as headcount and frameworks grow.

We break down every cost driver — and how to avoid overpaying — in our dedicated Vanta pricing guide. One thing worth noting here: as the number one Vanta partner globally, Agency can often get clients onto the platform at partner pricing that is more favorable than buying direct, while also bundling the implementation work.

Vanta vs. the Alternatives

Vanta is the category leader, but it is not the only compliance automation platform. The most common comparison is Vanta vs. Drata — two strong platforms with meaningful differences in pricing model, integration depth, and user experience. We compare them in detail in our Drata vs. Vanta comparison, and we cover the Sprinto vs. Vanta question for teams weighing a lower-cost option.

Our honest take, having implemented all of them: the platform matters less than how well it is configured and operated. A well-run Vanta program beats a poorly-run anything. Which is the entire point of working with a partner.

Why Agency Is the #1 Vanta Partner Globally

Here is what we tell every client: Vanta hands you a dashboard full of passing and failing controls. Agency turns that dashboard into a finished audit. As the number one Vanta partner globally, we do the work that the platform cannot:

• We scope the program correctly from day one — the right frameworks, the right systems, the right Trust Services Criteria — so you neither over-build nor fail.
• We configure Vanta and wire up every integration, so the automation actually covers your environment instead of leaving silent gaps.
• We author your policies to reflect how your company really operates, not generic templates an auditor will see through.
• We remediate the findings Vanta surfaces, working directly in your cloud and identity systems to close gaps fast.
• We manage the auditor relationship end to end — selecting a reputable firm, running the engagement, and pushing the report across the finish line.
• We operate the program continuously using Agency's purpose-built AI compliance agents, so your posture stays audit-ready between cycles rather than decaying until the next scramble.

The difference shows up in time-to-audit-ready. Companies that run a Vanta compliance program alone often spend months figuring out scoping, policies, and remediation on their own. With Agency running the program on top of Vanta, that timeline compresses dramatically — and it stays compressed, because we keep operating it.

Get Vanta Through Agency

The most efficient way to adopt Vanta is to get it through Agency rather than buying direct and figuring out the rest yourself. When you do, you get three things at once:

1. Partner pricing on the platform — we can frequently secure better terms than self-serve.
2. A managed implementation — we connect your systems, configure your frameworks, write your policies, and remediate your gaps.
3. Ongoing operation — we run the program continuously through our AI compliance agents and our advisory team, so compliance becomes something that happens for you rather than to you.

This mirrors how we approach every technology partnership at Agency — the same integrated model we described in our CrowdStrike partnership, where the tooling and the expertise to operate it come together rather than being sold separately. If you are evaluating Vanta, or already own it and are stuck, that is exactly the gap we close.

Key Takeaways

• What Vanta does: it automates security compliance — continuously collecting audit evidence, monitoring controls in real time, and managing frameworks like SOC 2 and ISO 27001 across 400+ integrations and 20+ standards.
• How it works: connect your systems, select frameworks, let Vanta map controls to automatically collected evidence, remediate the gaps, monitor continuously, and hand organized evidence to an independent auditor.
• What it does not do: Vanta does not perform your audit, scope your program, write tailored policies, remediate findings, manage your auditor, or make you genuinely secure — those require human expertise.
• The platform is necessary but not sufficient. A well-configured, well-operated Vanta program beats a neglected one every time, which is why how it is run matters more than which platform you pick.
• Agency is the number one Vanta partner globally. We scope, configure, author, remediate, and operate the program on top of Vanta — often at partner pricing — so you reach audit-ready faster and stay there.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does Vanta do?

Vanta is a compliance automation platform that connects to your cloud infrastructure, identity provider, and business tools to continuously collect audit evidence, monitor your security controls, and prepare you for audits against frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR. Rather than gathering screenshots and spreadsheets by hand before each audit, your evidence is collected automatically and any control that falls out of compliance is flagged in real time.

Is Vanta a SOC 2 tool, and does it get you SOC 2 certified?

Vanta is one of the most widely used platforms for SOC 2, but it does not issue the report. It automates the readiness work — control monitoring and evidence collection — while an independent CPA firm performs the actual SOC 2 audit and issues the report. In other words, Vanta gets you audit-ready; a licensed auditor produces the report. (And technically SOC 2 results in a report, not a "certification" — see our SOC 2 guide.)

What compliance frameworks does Vanta support?

Vanta supports 20+ frameworks, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA, GDPR, HITRUST, PCI DSS, NIST AI RMF, CMMC, FedRAMP, DORA, NIS2, and the EU AI Act, plus the ability to build custom frameworks. Because controls can be shared across frameworks, evidence collected once often satisfies multiple standards.

Does Vanta perform the audit?

No. Vanta is not an audit firm or certification body and cannot issue a SOC 2 report or ISO 27001 certificate. It automates the preparation and continuous monitoring, then hands organized evidence to an independent auditor who performs the assessment and issues the report.

How much does Vanta cost?

Vanta uses quote-based pricing that scales with employee headcount, the number of frameworks, and add-on features. Most organizations land in the low-to-mid five figures annually for a single framework. As the number one Vanta partner globally, Agency can often secure partner pricing — see our Vanta pricing guide for the full breakdown.

Why use a Vanta partner like Agency instead of buying Vanta directly?

Vanta automates the busywork, but it does not scope your controls, write your policies, remediate findings, or manage your auditor. As the number one Vanta partner globally, Agency handles the implementation and runs the program for you — often with partner pricing — so you reach audit-ready in a fraction of the time it takes to do it alone, and stay there through continuous operation.