According to a recent PwC survey, 93 percent of executives believe that building and maintaining trust improves the bottom line for their business. Security is a major factor in building that trust. In fact, in Vanta’s State of Trust Report, nearly half (48 percent) of respondents said they believe good security practices are what drive customer trust.
The burden of building and demonstrating trust is a big strain on your security team—a team that is likely already resource-constrained trying to maintain day-to-day security operations at your organization. As your organization grows, the demands on the security team only increase. Many of these new demands come from prospects and customers doing their due diligence about the security measures your business has in place. Your team is then left struggling to balance a growing number of security questionnaires and customer requests while managing everyday responsibilities.
Establishing a trust center can help you earn trust with customers and prospects while freeing up your security team’s time and preventing them from becoming a bottleneck for revenue-impacting deadlines.
In this blog, we’ll explain:
- What is a trust center?
- What does a trust center include?
- The benefits of having a trust center
What is a trust center?
A trust center is a centralized hub that displays and manages all of your organization’s security and compliance information. This is most often an externally-facing web page, dashboard, or portal designed to show prospects and customers the security measures you have in place. Trust centers enable buyers to self-serve the security documentation and other information needed for their vendor reviews and due diligence.
Market-leading trust centers will enable you to display real-time security and compliance data linked to your controls and tests, manage requests for information in one place, track and automate requests based on CRM data, and even automate the NDA process for confidential document requests.
There is also value in the back-end experience of a trust center, which enables your internal team to manage information related to security efforts and compliance posture in a single source of truth. Your teams can also analyze the impact of security efforts by connecting your trust center with CRM platforms like Salesforce or HubSpot.
{{cta_webinar5="/cta-modules"}} | Webinar: Save time with Questionnaire automation & Trust Center
Different types of trust centers
Trust centers have evolved over time. Today, there are a variety of hubs under the trust center umbrella that service different needs for different types of organizations. A few examples include:
What does a trust center include?
Each organization will customize their trust center to the needs of their customers and prospects. What’s included most often is a list of the frameworks you’ve attained, such as your GDPR compliance, a SOC 2 report, or ISO 27001 certification, evidence for passing controls, the subprocessors you use, and additional resources like an FAQ.
Here are a few basic elements to include in your trust center:
{{cta_withimage17="/cta-modules"}} | State of Trust Report
Common concerns when building a trust center
Trust centers display a large amount of sensitive—and ever-changing—information. With that in mind, there are a few common concerns that many teams have related to building a trust center:
- Legal concerns: While trust centers themselves are public-facing, all the information contained within a trust center isn’t necessarily meant to be public. The best trust centers can automate the NDA process for confidential document requests and track access status all in one place.
- Logistical concerns: Policies and controls are updated regularly. If your trust center is managed as an independent entity, it can be cumbersome to keep up with updates. Leading trust centers are connected to a centralized repository of security information, so updates are automatically applied to the trust center without a secondary workstream from a marketing department or web team.
- Reporting concerns: It can be difficult to show a return on security investments, like a trust center. Leading trust centers connect to tools like Salesforce, so your team can track the impact of security efforts. This can help you see which prospects interacted with your trust center and how it ushered them through the funnel.
- Marketing concerns: Homegrown trust centers are difficult to manage, due to the ongoing maintenance and updates required—but they do give your team unlimited personalization opportunities to fit your organization's brand identity. The best third-party trust center solutions provide similar customization capabilities so your trust center fits your brand and feels like a natural extension of your online presence.
Benefits of having a trust center
A recent IDC report outlined all the ways in which a trust center can help your organization prove trust, save time, and accelerate deals, offering advantages for revenue generation and operational efficiency.
A trust center benefits your organization by:
- Centralizing security documentation: Keep all security documents in one place, streamlining customer requests and evidence collection for audits.
- Demonstrating trust: Elevate trust and transparency with customers and prospects by making your security posture readily available.
- Promoting low or no-touch security reviews: Enable customers to easily self-service the security information they need. This accelerates the review process and reduces the number of security questionnaires you need to complete, freeing up your time and resources.
- Accelerating deal closure: Shorten the deal cycle by streamlining security reviews.
{{cta_withimage18="/cta-modules"}} | IDC Analyst Brief | How trust centers save time and accelerate sales
Trust centers and security questionnaires
Security questionnaires are a critical part of most deals but require a lot of work to complete. The sheer volume of requests, plus the comprehensive nature of industry-standard questionnaires like CAIQ and SIG (which include hundreds of questions), create a lot of time-consuming and redundant work for security teams. Security questionnaires also require a lot of cross-functional support and it’s common to experience bottlenecks when facilitating communications between subject matter experts on the security team, sales leads, and representatives from customer or prospect companies.
Questionnaires also come in a variety of formats—like forms, spreadsheets, and third-party portals—which create logistical challenges when processing and responding to incoming questionnaires.
Trust centers are a great way to ease the burdens associated with security questionnaires. Trust centers allow you to provide information for prospects to self-serve, without involving your security team. They offer a first line of defense for buyers to seamlessly access important security information they need to make a purchase decision.
Build your own with Vanta Trust Center
Vanta powers the world’s largest network of trust centers, including the likes of Intercom, Miro, ZoomInfo, and more. Vanta Trust Centers empower businesses to showcase their security posture confidently. It offers a comprehensive solution to streamline security reviews and effortlessly manage access requests—all within a unified, centralized repository.
With a trust center, Vanta customers deflect 87 percent of inbound security reviews. This results in significant time savings. SmartRecruiters, for example, saves 20 hours of manual work per week by proactively demonstrating trust with a Vanta trust center.
With a Vanta Trust Center, you can:
- Publicly display security information and commitments in one place.
- Show your real-time security and compliance data linked to Vanta controls and tests.
- Leverage Vanta AI to enable customers to ask questions against your trust center
- Centralize security and compliance information.
- Offer click-through NDAs for accessing confidential documents.
- Track and automate requests using CRM data.
- Manage all security requests in one place.
To learn more about Vanta Trust Centers and how to use a trust center to enhance your security, watch our on-demand webinar: How to streamline security reviews with Trust Center.
{{cta_simple14="/cta-modules"}} | Trust center product page
Building and Managing Trust
What is a trust center? And how to use it to demonstrate trust
Building and Managing Trust
According to a recent PwC survey, 93 percent of executives believe that building and maintaining trust improves the bottom line for their business. Security is a major factor in building that trust. In fact, in Vanta’s State of Trust Report, nearly half (48 percent) of respondents said they believe good security practices are what drive customer trust.
The burden of building and demonstrating trust is a big strain on your security team—a team that is likely already resource-constrained trying to maintain day-to-day security operations at your organization. As your organization grows, the demands on the security team only increase. Many of these new demands come from prospects and customers doing their due diligence about the security measures your business has in place. Your team is then left struggling to balance a growing number of security questionnaires and customer requests while managing everyday responsibilities.
Establishing a trust center can help you earn trust with customers and prospects while freeing up your security team’s time and preventing them from becoming a bottleneck for revenue-impacting deadlines.
In this blog, we’ll explain:
- What is a trust center?
- What does a trust center include?
- The benefits of having a trust center
What is a trust center?
A trust center is a centralized hub that displays and manages all of your organization’s security and compliance information. This is most often an externally-facing web page, dashboard, or portal designed to show prospects and customers the security measures you have in place. Trust centers enable buyers to self-serve the security documentation and other information needed for their vendor reviews and due diligence.
Market-leading trust centers will enable you to display real-time security and compliance data linked to your controls and tests, manage requests for information in one place, track and automate requests based on CRM data, and even automate the NDA process for confidential document requests.
There is also value in the back-end experience of a trust center, which enables your internal team to manage information related to security efforts and compliance posture in a single source of truth. Your teams can also analyze the impact of security efforts by connecting your trust center with CRM platforms like Salesforce or HubSpot.
{{cta_webinar5="/cta-modules"}} | Webinar: Save time with Questionnaire automation & Trust Center
Different types of trust centers
Trust centers have evolved over time. Today, there are a variety of hubs under the trust center umbrella that service different needs for different types of organizations. A few examples include:
What does a trust center include?
Each organization will customize their trust center to the needs of their customers and prospects. What’s included most often is a list of the frameworks you’ve attained, such as your GDPR compliance, a SOC 2 report, or ISO 27001 certification, evidence for passing controls, the subprocessors you use, and additional resources like an FAQ.
Here are a few basic elements to include in your trust center:
{{cta_withimage17="/cta-modules"}} | State of Trust Report
Common concerns when building a trust center
Trust centers display a large amount of sensitive—and ever-changing—information. With that in mind, there are a few common concerns that many teams have related to building a trust center:
- Legal concerns: While trust centers themselves are public-facing, all the information contained within a trust center isn’t necessarily meant to be public. The best trust centers can automate the NDA process for confidential document requests and track access status all in one place.
- Logistical concerns: Policies and controls are updated regularly. If your trust center is managed as an independent entity, it can be cumbersome to keep up with updates. Leading trust centers are connected to a centralized repository of security information, so updates are automatically applied to the trust center without a secondary workstream from a marketing department or web team.
- Reporting concerns: It can be difficult to show a return on security investments, like a trust center. Leading trust centers connect to tools like Salesforce, so your team can track the impact of security efforts. This can help you see which prospects interacted with your trust center and how it ushered them through the funnel.
- Marketing concerns: Homegrown trust centers are difficult to manage, due to the ongoing maintenance and updates required—but they do give your team unlimited personalization opportunities to fit your organization's brand identity. The best third-party trust center solutions provide similar customization capabilities so your trust center fits your brand and feels like a natural extension of your online presence.
Benefits of having a trust center
A recent IDC report outlined all the ways in which a trust center can help your organization prove trust, save time, and accelerate deals, offering advantages for revenue generation and operational efficiency.
A trust center benefits your organization by:
- Centralizing security documentation: Keep all security documents in one place, streamlining customer requests and evidence collection for audits.
- Demonstrating trust: Elevate trust and transparency with customers and prospects by making your security posture readily available.
- Promoting low or no-touch security reviews: Enable customers to easily self-service the security information they need. This accelerates the review process and reduces the number of security questionnaires you need to complete, freeing up your time and resources.
- Accelerating deal closure: Shorten the deal cycle by streamlining security reviews.
{{cta_withimage18="/cta-modules"}} | IDC Analyst Brief | How trust centers save time and accelerate sales
Trust centers and security questionnaires
Security questionnaires are a critical part of most deals but require a lot of work to complete. The sheer volume of requests, plus the comprehensive nature of industry-standard questionnaires like CAIQ and SIG (which include hundreds of questions), create a lot of time-consuming and redundant work for security teams. Security questionnaires also require a lot of cross-functional support and it’s common to experience bottlenecks when facilitating communications between subject matter experts on the security team, sales leads, and representatives from customer or prospect companies.
Questionnaires also come in a variety of formats—like forms, spreadsheets, and third-party portals—which create logistical challenges when processing and responding to incoming questionnaires.
Trust centers are a great way to ease the burdens associated with security questionnaires. Trust centers allow you to provide information for prospects to self-serve, without involving your security team. They offer a first line of defense for buyers to seamlessly access important security information they need to make a purchase decision.
Build your own with Vanta Trust Center
Vanta powers the world’s largest network of trust centers, including the likes of Intercom, Miro, ZoomInfo, and more. Vanta Trust Centers empower businesses to showcase their security posture confidently. It offers a comprehensive solution to streamline security reviews and effortlessly manage access requests—all within a unified, centralized repository.
With a trust center, Vanta customers deflect 87 percent of inbound security reviews. This results in significant time savings. SmartRecruiters, for example, saves 20 hours of manual work per week by proactively demonstrating trust with a Vanta trust center.
With a Vanta Trust Center, you can:
- Publicly display security information and commitments in one place.
- Show your real-time security and compliance data linked to Vanta controls and tests.
- Leverage Vanta AI to enable customers to ask questions against your trust center
- Centralize security and compliance information.
- Offer click-through NDAs for accessing confidential documents.
- Track and automate requests using CRM data.
- Manage all security requests in one place.
To learn more about Vanta Trust Centers and how to use a trust center to enhance your security, watch our on-demand webinar: How to streamline security reviews with Trust Center.
{{cta_simple14="/cta-modules"}} | Trust center product page
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