4 takeaways from A-LIGN’s 2024 Compliance Benchmark Report

A compliance audit shows your customers exactly what measures you have in place to keep their data and assets safe. Given that trust is such a crucial aspect of customer relationships, the quality and efficiency of your compliance audit is more important than ever. 

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A-LIGN, one of Vanta’s technology-enabled security and compliance partners, recently released its 2024 Compliance Benchmark Report, based on an annual survey of nearly 700 business leaders and compliance professionals. The report gives an overview of the challenges and motivations compliance teams face today as it relates to audit. This blog will cover the highlights from the report and provide insights that companies can use to evaluate and enhance their compliance strategies.


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1. Report quality matters to customers 

Of those surveyed, 38% of organizations have had a report rejected by a vendor or prospect. Simply complying with a customer’s preferred framework is not enough—you need to provide a high quality compliance report that assures your customers of the security controls you have in place. A rejected report can cost the organization additional time and money to produce an acceptable report or can result in the loss of a business deal.

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The quality of your report comes down to the auditor you choose. The top two factors organizations use to determine whether a report is high quality are the auditor’s reputation and an explanation of best practices, industry benchmarks, or other helpful content in the final report. 

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2. Audit consolidation can save teams time and money

The report finds that the biggest challenge in the audit process is limited staff resources an organization has to dedicate to compliance. In over half (51%) of organizations, the IT department is in charge of compliance—while only 20% of companies have a dedicated compliance department.

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Nearly all (96%) of the companies surveyed believe consolidating multiple audits could save them time, money, or both. Audit consolidation helps solve the problem of limited resourcing by reducing duplicative efforts—in addition to increasing consistency, reducing the time and cost of an audit, and improving overall collaborations across the organization.  

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Yet, only 16% reported that they consolidate their yearly audits into a single event. Most organizations (83%) conduct multiple audits per year but plan for each one individually.

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3. Building trust with compliance is as important as closing deals

Prior research done by A-LIGN shows that the driving force behind compliance programs was increasing revenue, winning new clients, and pressure from leadership. These three reasons comprised nearly half of all responses in 2023. And while this is still an important factor today—with 34% of companies reporting that they’ve lost business opportunities due to the absence of a crucial certification this year, there's been a shift. 

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While compliance is still important for business deals, establishing trust with customers and stakeholders rose as a motivator by 36% compared to the previous year. Additionally, validating the effectiveness of security controls rose in importance by 55% year over year. 

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4. The right tools and partners can help teams overcome audit challenges

In addition to the staffing challenges that organizations are facing (21%), companies reported that their other top audit challenges are complexity in conducting multiple audits (19%) and tedious and manual evidence collection (18%). 

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Organizations can gain expertise and skills they may not otherwise have internally by using an audit partner. This can reduce the burden on the company’s limited resources and ensure a successful audit outcome. 

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Technology can also enhance the efficiency and accuracy of the audit process, especially when it comes to evidence collection. A tech-enabled audit process can significantly enhance efficiency and accuracy, which is why it’s important to choose a provider that leverages compliance automation solutions, like Vanta, to streamline evidence collection, automate tasks, and provide real-time insights.

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With Vanta and A-LIGN, customers get the best of both worlds—a scalable platform to automate up to 90% of the evidence collection needed to complete a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit, and a highly-regarded firm to complete the audit. 

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Vanta covers all of A-LIGN’s evidence requirements directly in its platform, ensuring a seamless handoff to auditors. Combining Vanta’s flexible platform with A-LIGN’s broad range of services gives companies of all sizes a scalable solution for growing and evolving their compliance program with maximum efficiency.

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To see more insights, read A-LIGN’s 2024 Compliance Benchmark Report or checkout our recent Ask Me (Almost) Anything webinar with A-LIGN where we discuss how to properly prepare for your next compliance audit.