The AI Governance Checklist

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Reviewed by

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Tagore offers strategic services to small businesses.

A partnership that can scale
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Tagore prioritized finding a managed compliance partner with an established product, dedicated support team, and rapid release rate.

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AI adoption is accelerating—and so are the risks that come with it. IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report found that 20% of organizations experienced a breach involving shadow AI, increasing the average cost by $700,000.

AI isn’t optional, but unmanaged AI introduces measurable exposure and uncertainty. This checklist by Vanta and A-LIGN outlines six practical, structured steps to help you establish clear, accountable AI governance without rebuilding your program from the ground up.

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Build AI governance that scales

AI can drive meaningful business value—but only with clear governance in place. Start with structure, assign accountability, and build incrementally.

Vanta helps you operationalize AI governance by mapping requirements to controls and automating evidence collection. When you’re ready to validate your program, A-LIGN provides accredited audit and certification services to help demonstrate trust and compliance.

Schedule a demo with Vanta or reach out to A-LIGN to learn more.

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A note from Vanta: Vanta is not a law firm, and this article does not constitute or contain legal advice or create an attorney-client relationship. When determining your obligations and compliance with respect to relevant laws and regulations, you should consult a licensed attorney.

Access Review Stage	Content / Functionality
Across all stages	Easily create and save a new access review at a point in time View detailed audit evidence of historical access reviews
Setup access review procedures	Define a global access review procedure that stakeholders can follow, ensuring consistency and mitigation of human error in reviews Set your access review frequency (monthly, quarterly, etc.) and working period/deadlines
Consolidate account access data from systems	Integrate systems using dozens of pre-built integrations, or “connectors”. System account and HRIS data is pulled into Vanta. Upcoming integrations include Zoom and Intercom (account access), and Personio (HRIS) Upload access files from non-integrated systems View and select systems in-scope for the review
Review, approve, and deny user access	Select the appropriate systems reviewer and due date Get automatic notifications and reminders to systems reviewer of deadlines Automatic flagging of “risky” employee accounts that have been terminated or switched departments Intuitive interface to see all accounts with access, account accept/deny buttons, and notes section Track progress of individual systems access reviews and see accounts that need to be removed or have access modified Bulk sort, filter, and alter accounts based on account roles and employee title
Assign remediation tasks to system owners	Built-in remediation workflow for reviewers to request access changes and for admin to view and manage requests Optional task tracker integration to create tickets for any access changes and provide visibility to the status of tickets and remediation
Verify changes to access	Focused view of accounts flagged for access changes for easy tracking and management Automated evidence of remediation completion displayed for integrated systems Manual evidence of remediation can be uploaded for non-integrated systems
Report and re-evaluate results	Auditor can log into Vanta to see history of all completed access reviews Internals can see status of reviews in progress and also historical review detail