Nominal wins customer trust in mission-critical industries with Vanta

The company

Testing the hardware of the future

Accurately testing hardware like satellites and autonomous cars is a complex, high-stakes process, to say the least. The founders of Nominal, which includes alumni of Anduril, Palantir, SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, and the U.S. Navy, saw firsthand how fragmented and outdated most testing workflows had become. 

They launched Nominal to bring modern software principles to hardware testing in industries like aerospace, defense, and energy, where iteration cycles have notoriously been slow. Nominal helps organizations like Anduril and the U.S. Navy develop, produce, and operate their systems at scale. With Nominal, hardware teams save time, move faster, and hit their milestones across the hardware life cycle.

Craig Schwartz, Nominal’s General Counsel and Head of Information Security, leads the company’s compliance and security team. From the start, he and the founders knew that building credibility in government-adjacent sectors meant getting compliance right. 

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The challenge

Trust as table-stakes

Nominal’s customers build innovative, next-gen hardware and operate in high-stakes environments. Their data is a competitive advantage and, in many cases, our national security advantage. As such, information security is non-negotiable.

This meant that Nominal needed to achieve SOC 2 compliance as a baseline requirement for doing business. “You’re not going to be able to do missile test design if you can’t demonstrate you have appropriate cybersecurity controls in place,” said Craig. 

Nominal also needed to move quickly, amid increasing demand from customers with strict requirements and an urgent need for Nominal’s solution. To operate within this reality, Nominal couldn’t afford to waste time on slow, manual processes or hire a dedicated compliance team.

As they evaluated a number of tools to help streamline the process, they identified the most important criteria:

• Speed to compliance: The ability to move quickly without compromising quality.
• Ease of use: A clean, intuitive interface that centralized critical compliance data.
• Integration depth: Broad and deep integrations with their modern tech stack.
• Vendor network: Trusted partnerships with pentest vendors and auditors.
• Product maturity: A platform that was proven and ready to scale with them.

Vanta stood out immediately compared to other vendors. Craig cited the best-in-class UI, unmatched integration coverage, and the ability to reduce SOC 2 preparation time, without the need for expensive consultants or time-consuming RFPs.

“Vanta was the clear category leader. The product’s great, the UI is clean, and it centralizes the relevant compliance data in one place.”

Craig Schwartz, General Counsel and Head of InfoSec, Nominal

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The solution

Fast, focused, and built to scale

Nominal implemented Vanta early in its compliance journey, using the platform as a central hub for managing SOC 2 requirements and aligning its controls to customer and regulatory expectations. With a need for speed, it was critical to find a solution that would actively streamline and support their work, fast.

Vanta’s robust integrations allowed Nominal to connect tools across its modern tech stack without the need for manual oversight, which made it incredibly easy to get up and running quickly, Craig noted. 

Nominal also benefited from Vanta’s trusted vendor ecosystem. Through Vanta, Nominal was introduced to a pentest partner and auditor, which saved them from conducting a time-consuming vendor search and negotiation process.

“Vanta made it easy to find vendors who not only understood startups, but were familiar with our industry and operating reality.”

Craig Schwartz, General Counsel and Head of InfoSec, Nominal

Vanta gives Nominal real-time visibility into the security and compliance posture of any third-party vendor, helping them streamline assessments, stay audit-ready, and earn the trust of their high-stakes customer base.

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The impact

Scaling smart from first test to global launch

Vanta helped Nominal achieve SOC 2 compliance in half the time it would have taken with a manual approach, enabling the company to move quickly in a high-stakes industry. 

The impact has extended beyond internal efficiency. More than 75 percent of Nominal’s customers require or track compliance KPIs, and Vanta gave the Nominal team a centralized, auditable way to meet those expectations. This early investment in compliance helped Nominal establish trust with government-adjacent partners and customers, where credibility is a prerequisite for doing business.

Beyond time savings, Vanta allows Nominal to stay focused on its core mission: enabling continuous, collaborative testing for mission-critical systems. Instead of getting bogged down in vendor sourcing or manual compliance work, the team can spend more time improving infrastructure, accelerating product development, and building trust with highly regulated customers.

As Nominal expands into new markets, Vanta continues to serve as a scalable compliance foundation. 

“Each new product we launch builds on the same compliance foundation we’ve established with Vanta. Like Nominal, it’s a powerful mission accelerant.”

Craig Schwartz, General Counsel and Head of InfoSec, Nominal

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