CASE STUDY
ÉTUDE DE CAS
How Pendo built a unified security program with Vanta
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"Vanta is my memory. It helps me know where I need to focus. That's where I go every day to ensure that we’re doing the right things to protect all of that data that we receive."
TL;DR
- Challenge: Pendo's security team managed compliance through disconnected spreadsheets and manual processes that couldn't scale to meet growing enterprise customer demands.
- Solution: Pendo deployed Vanta as the operating system for its security program, unifying compliance, third-party risk management, and trust into a single continuous platform.
- ROI: Access reviews reduced from five days to half a day, and vendor reviews cut from two hours to 45 minutes.
The company
Helping companies create better software experiences
Pendo is an AI observability and adoption platform that helps companies improve how their users engage with software. Processing 20 billion events per day on behalf of its customers, Pendo carries a significant responsibility to keep data safe and secure.
The challenge
Pendo needed a security program to match its growth
With its security team split across operations, product security, and compliance, Pendo was operating without a centralized way to manage governance, risk, and compliance.
What Pendo tried first: Initially, the team relied on spreadsheets and disconnected tools to run its GRC program, without a unified view across systems.
Pendo's pivot point: Manual processes slowed everything down. Quarterly access reviews took nearly a full week of one person’s time. Risk assessments were conducted infrequently and relied on fragile spreadsheets with inconsistent scoring. Collecting SOC 2 reports and questionnaires for vendor reviews required hours of manual coordination, averaging two hours per vendor across 400 vendors. Meanwhile, security requests from prospects created internal bottlenecks, requiring manual routing across email, Slack, and phone.
Why Pendo chose Vanta: Pendo needed a unified platform for compliance, risk, and third-party risk management with real-time data and fast implementation. After a proof of concept, the value of working with Vanta was immediate, and strong alignment on customer focus helped solidify the decision.
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The Vanta impact
From reactive and manual to continuous
Pendo deployed Vanta as the operating system for its security program, connecting it with tools and systems across the organization to create a single, real-time view of compliance, risk, and vendor posture.
The platform replaced fragmented spreadsheet workflows with continuous monitoring, automated evidence collection, and self-serve customer trust—giving Pendo's team the leverage to operate at enterprise scale.
Here's how Pendo deployed Vanta:
Looking ahead, Kesler sees Vanta as the platform that will carry Pendo through an increasingly complex AI risk landscape: "AI is obviously the thing that we’re all thinking about at the moment,” he says. “I view Vanta as our platform that’s going to help us get there. I’m excited about the AI capabilities that we’re seeing in the platform.”
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