Enhanced VRM solution unlocks how organizations manage, monitor, and maintain oversight of third-party risk

It’s no secret that managing vendor risk is one of the most challenging aspects of any security program—our most recent State of Trust report found that one in two businesses have terminated a vendor relationship due to security concerns. The rapid proliferation of SaaS tools and AI technologies only ups the ante by increasing the complexity of vendor monitoring and oversight. 

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This challenge becomes more complex as businesses scale. Recent data shows that organizations with 1-50 employees work with an average of 55 vendors—that number rises to 182 vendors for organizations with 1,000 employees. The larger the business, the more vendors they work with, which inevitably expands the risk surface. Regulatory bodies are raising expectations around third-party risk management to contend with these complexities.

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The traditional approach to managing vendor risk, which relies on annual point-in-time assessments, is no longer enough in today's complex vendor landscape. That’s why Vanta’s Vendor Risk Management (VRM) solution transforms vendor security from a manual checkbox exercise into an automated, continuous monitoring process that surfaces actionable insights across an organization’s vendor portfolio. Our AI-powered solution streamlines workflows while maintaining the deep security context you need to manage third-party risk and meet regulatory demands.  

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Over the past several months, we’ve shipped key features that unlock how organizations manage, monitor, and maintain oversight of third-party risk. From onboarding and managing all your vendors to finding ways to speed up and accurately complete vendor security reviews to remediating risk, Vanta delivers a comprehensive, end-to-end vendor risk management solution.

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A VRM solution tailored to your needs

Our solution is built for organizations of all sizes. We help small businesses uncover shadow IT, manage risk to meet compliance needs, and build foundational processes that will scale alongside you. For large organizations, we help accelerate the pace of security reviews, customize risk tracking based on specific needs, and integrate vendor risk across a broader GRC program.  

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Discover and onboard vendors with ease

Vanta offers a single view of your vendor portfolio. Our solution lets you view third-party risk holistically and discover and onboard vendors easily. 

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• Automatic vendor discovery tracks shadow IT so you can keep tabs on apps that entered your ecosystem outside official channels. An added benefit? Find potential instances where you’re paying multiple vendors for similar functionality, then reduce tool sprawl and costs.
• Seamless procurement allows you to track procurement requests directly in Vanta, making it easier to collaborate with stakeholders and prevent requests from falling through the cracks.
• Vanta’s REST API unlocks powerful workflows to manage vendors, such as the ability to create vendors directly within VRM, add documentation to vendors, retrieve security review status and decisions, and more. 

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Streamline security reviews

With automation, we’ve reduced the time it takes to complete vendor security reviews by up to 50 percent (according to customer data). 

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• Automated evidence-gathering allows you to quickly surface and re-use existing evidence and documentation from past security reviews and Trust Centers and sends automated reminders when documents aren’t received.
• Preferred evidence defaults provide further customization so you can adapt Vanta to the nuances of your specific business. Set defaults that apply to all vendors and get altered when all preferred evidence is available and ready for analysis.
• Vanta AI drives efficiency by combing through documents and questionnaire responses and highlighting answers so you can identify findings and manage follow-ups.
• Security review prioritization saves you time by quickly and easily identifying the reviews that need attention based on several criteria, such as whether it’s the first review of that vendor or the due date is approaching. 

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Remediate risk beyond the initial review

Your vendor risk management program is only as reliable as your visibility into all possible risks. Vanta helps you customize how you define risk, identify findings quickly, set up a remediation plan, and follow up to ensure those plans are met.

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• A customizable inherent risk rubric allows you to define how you track inherent risk and tailor it to your organization’s internal requirements. You can also take advantage of out-of-the-box templates to get started faster.
• Mapping findings to risks enables you to track both internal and vendor risk in one place. You can flag a finding and make an informed decision to accept the risk, mitigate the risk, or save it as a notable finding with no risk. Once created, findings can be mapped to risks in the Risk Register, ensuring risks don't fall through the cracks.
• Follow-up and residual risk trackers allow you to take the recommended treatment plan and resolution for each finding and—using Jira—create a follow-up task to manage that workflow. Based on your analysis, you can also set a residual risk level for each vendor.

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Real results with Vanta VRM 

For our customers, the impact is clear. With enhanced automation across the security review process, advanced customization so organizations can tailor VRM to their specific risk requirements, and AI to accelerate security reviews, our customers uplevel their vendor programs, move faster, and treat vendor risk as a continuous process—not a point-in-time check. 

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In a recent IDC analysis¹, companies recognized a sizable productivity gain of 54 percent after implementing Vanta’s VRM solution. Customers also shared their experience:

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• Vanta elevates security practices: “By automating and centralizing our processes, we’ve enhanced our defenses against threats, while fostering trust with customers and stakeholders. Vanta empowers us to tell a story of security, collaboration, and confidence—because protecting our organization isn’t just a responsibility; it’s a commitment to growth and meaningful connection.”
  
  • Roze San Nicholas, Director of Information Security, Merge
• Vanta streamlines third-party management: “With VRM, we safely onboard new vendors and maintain our annual security reviews of them in a documented and automated manner. We are not a large security team so having Vanta’s VRM tool watching for newly installed software on our endpoints also helps us to manage any new vendors that might appear unannounced. We have been able to operationalize our management of vendors with Vanta’s VRM tool.”
  
  • Tony English, VP of Information Security / CISO, WorkJam

We’re far from done. Additional updates to our VRM solution are already in the works. For the latest updates, register for our Vanta Delivers webinar on March 19 or request a demo.

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¹ Source: IDC White Paper, The Business Value of Vanta (doc #US52656824), January 2025. Sponsored by Vanta.