How Tagore unlocks efficiency with Vanta

‍The company

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Managed services to supercharge small businesses 

Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Oslo, Norway, Tagore is a Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) with the goal of taking the complexity out of cybersecurity, compliance, and privacy to help make their clients more productive and focused on their core business objectives. Tagore empowers emerging businesses to reach their potential for growth and success by helping them establish and maintain a security posture. 

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Born out of its founding team’s deep experience in security and compliance in highly regulated industries, Tagore focuses on creating strategic relationships with clients that help support them across their security journey. Tagore focuses its client base on startups and small businesses who typically haven’t had the internal resources or budgets to dedicate to security and compliance initiatives, which create both security vulnerabilities and growth risks alike. With Tagore’s services, clients can focus on expansion efforts while trusting their security and compliance program management and strategy are in the hands of an expert team.

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The challenge

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Inability to scale practice to meet customer needs 

Andreas Hidalgo Hegna, Partner and CEO at Tagore, started Tagore together with Magnus Solberg to create a vCISO service that could help companies turn their security posture into a business enabler. The needs of Tagore’s client base are vast, with clients looking to become ISO 27001 or SOC 2 compliant, gain control over their risks to externally demonstrate trust to potential buyers, or navigate industry and region-specific security requirements. Because of the nuance of their client needs, Tagore focuses on supporting clients throughout the entirety of their security journey, from taking the first step towards a compliance standard, to continuously monitoring and managing risk, or aiding security questionnaire completion. 

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Even with Tagore’s deep expertise in GRC, initially working without an automated platform meant that helping clients reach their goals took a considerable amount of time and effort. “We were stuck in the old-school way of having to manually implement templates, procedures, and metrics. So we never were able to lift our perspective to the strategic level because we were always at the operative level,” says Andreas. “If our customers are going to be able to sell to larger enterprises in an increasingly regulated world, they need to have [security and compliance] measures in place but don't have the muscle that large companies do. So we need to think differently, and Vanta is a way to reach that goal.”

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The solution

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A platform to drive growth and efficiency to new heights 

After identifying the need for a managed compliance solution to help drive efficiency for their practice, Tagore prioritized product quality, maturity of a partner program, and depth of support as their primary requirements. In particular, product quality and its potential to impact deal flow were paramount to get right, “If we say that this product is something we stand behind, the quality of the product will be reflected on us as well”, says Andreas. With a growing client base and limited in-house support, Andreas knew he needed to find a reliable platform that could help scale Tagore’s impact. 

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Another important consideration for Tagore was having dedicated support in their time zone, helping to not only quickly answer questions and assist active deals, but also to understand the nuances of local markets. To this end, Andreas views his relationship with Vanta’s partner’s team as a key value driver of the program. “The trust we have with our Channel Manager is the reason we’re going to scale with Vanta,” says Andreas. 

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Finally, Vanta’s rapid pace of improvement stood out to Tagore as a compelling reason to join the partner program. “The frequency of new plugins was not a deal breaker, but a deal maker for us,” says Andreas. We saw that [because] Vanta had such a big throughput on changes that this is a place we could invest our time in learning the platform.” 

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The impact

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Shifting the security mindset from reactive to proactive 

After choosing Vanta as Tagore’s managed compliance platform solution, Andreas has already begun to see the dividends of the relationship in helping to close deals and drive efficiency. “In 99% of the cases, the CISO sees the value immediately, ” says Andreas. By putting the work of data collection and continuous monitoring on Vanta, Andreas can spend more time advising clients on a strategic level, allowing for higher quality outputs that enable Tagore to over-deliver on value to its clients. 

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By combining the power of Vanta’s automated platform with the deep GRC expertise of Tagore’s team, Andreas has been able to close new deals, build client trust, and find efficiency within his team. In addition to these benefits, Andreas has also identified a novel value driver,  helping reduce client burnout. Powered by Vanta’s continuous monitoring, Tagore has been able to help shift clients’ security mindset from reactive to proactive, driving positive outcomes that span far beyond their risk posture. “Instead of me coming in and pointing out all of the problems, I can now come in, point to all the problems and help clients fix them. So instead of adding to their stress, I can reduce their stress,” says Andreas.

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As Andreas looks ahead, he sees a bright future for the partnership between Vanta and Tagore. “Having a platform like Vanta and being able to leverage that as an MSSP enables us to work more strategically and deliver on our core mission.”