Introducing Private Links: A faster, easier way to gather vendor security information

When it comes to conducting vendor security reviews, the two most time-consuming tasks are gathering the relevant information from your vendor and analyzing it thoroughly. Last month, we announced AI-powered security document analysis to drastically simplify the process of extracting insights from SOC 2 reports, DPAs, and other sources that document a vendor’s security posture. 

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Today, we’re excited to announce Private Links, a new set of capabilities in our Vendor Risk Management solution to automate how security teams request security information from vendors. Read on to learn how it works. 

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The challenges of exchanging up-to-date security information

There are two sides to every security review, and both require significant time and effort. In fact, Vanta’s annual State of Trust Report found that 8 in 10 businesses (83%) have increased or plan to increase their use of automation, in particular for reducing manual work and streamlining vendor risk reviews and onboarding.

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Vendors are bogged down providing the same information over and over again, while buyers struggle with the volume of information they need to analyze before making a decision. Vanta  automates both sides of the security review process with workflows that enable a seamless exchange of information between vendors and buyers. 

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If a vendor uses Vanta to demonstrate their security posture, buyers can easily view and request information from their public Trust Center. But if the vendor isn't on Vanta, getting their security information is a painful and time-consuming process, requiring  hours going back and forth over email. Another option is to use existing third-party risk management tools, but they provide clunky questionnaire-centric portals that are onerous for vendors to use. Other tools offer managed services to collect information, but these are prohibitively expensive. 

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Automating security information requests with Private Links

Vanta’s approach to exchanging accurate, up-to-date security information is simpler for vendors, and more automated for buyers.

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With Private Links, VRM now lets you create fully customizable links that can be sent to your vendors at the start of a security review. Links are unique to each vendor and can be customized to request only the documents that need to be reviewed for that vendor. 

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For example, this is what you'd see when using Private Links to review a potential vendor's security posture. In this case, the vendor is Vanta.

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When your vendor opens the link, they see a clean page with easy-to-follow instructions to upload the requested documents. 

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In this case, Factio is requesting a SOC 2 Report and DPA from Vanta. All they have to do is upload these documents to complete the request. They can also invite team members to collaborate on completing the request. 

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The buyer is automatically notified when the vendor submits the requested information. These documents immediately show up in the security review section in VRM, where the buyer can use Vanta AI to instantly analyze them and extract findings. 

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Get started with Private Links

Private Links are now available to Vendor Risk Management customers. Want to learn more? Get in touch to schedule a demo and learn more about how Vanta can save hours per week in your security review process.