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November 9, 2022

Vanta announces enhanced Access Reviews solution

Vanta is thrilled to announce an enhanced Access Reviews solution. Thousands of customers already use Vanta’s existing access reporting to help demonstrate compliance during audits, reduce risk, and build a strong compliance and security posture. But now it’s leveled-up in a big way.

The enhanced Access Reviews solution is currently in beta and available for purchase. It includes pre-built system integrations, intuitive reviewer workflows, and remediation management to let you quickly review, adjust, and report on user access to systems. Let’s take a deeper look.

Understanding access reviews

An access review monitors all user access to systems and applications to ensure access is only for specific people and groups; people who need access to do their job; and people who require a certain level of access. These reviews are a necessary, recurring exercise as part of most standards and frameworks. They are also a best practice for cybersecurity which is used to reduce corporate risk.

Access reviews are vital because inappropriate or excessive access and credentials can be used by bad actors to enter systems and then destroy, alter, or steal sensitive data. Threats can include malicious insiders, departed employees, and external cyberthreats. Over 80% of breaches involve a human element, as people are the largest risk within an organization. And the Verizon 2022 Data Breach Investigations Report shows that the top cause of breaches is “use of stolen credentials.” 

The access review process is tailored for each organization, but the common steps are shown below.

Many organizations, especially ones with many systems and employees, struggle to perform access reviews for the reasons below. As a result they end up with audit issues, increased labor costs, a weak security posture, and delayed revenue from outdated attestations or certifications:

  • Manual, slow, and costly: A traditional access review can require lots of manual spreadsheets and documents, including messages and phone calls to internal task owners and external auditors to obtain access data, perform reviews, and show evidence. The process can take days and over $10,000 in labor costs. 70% of startups don't have dedicated security personnel, meaning access reviews are done by a founder or engineer, taking them away from more strategic work.

  • Limited and siloed: Some solutions, or use of spreadsheets, will not be robust enough to meet auditor approval across all standards and frameworks. And some access review tools are stand-alone with no integration or synergies with other compliance and risk systems and processes.

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Vanta’s Access Reviews solution

Vanta’s Access Reviews solution is a robust, automated offering that aligns to the main stages of an access review. It makes it easy to perform reviews on a proactive, continuous basis; not just a point-in-time review to check a compliance box. The result is faster, better, lower-cost access reviews that lead to streamlined audits, lower labor costs, stronger security posture, and accelerated revenue. 

Fast automation and reduced costs

Vanta’s Access Review solution is an integrated SaaS tool that removes the need for spreadsheets and back-and forth-emails with internal stakeholders and auditors. It includes pre-built system integrations to automatically consolidate live access data from all systems, intuitive reviewer workflows to approve/deny access, remediation management to assign tasks to owners, and reporting for both executives and auditors. 

You can quickly review, adjust, and report on user access to systems. It will guide organizations, even if new to access reviews, efficiently through the entire process which goes from days to hours, with labor cost savings in the thousands of dollars. And founders or engineers can spend more time on strategic work. 

Comprehensive and integrated

The Access Reviews solution is rigorous, captures best practices, and generates output that will be accepted by auditors for all standards and frameworks (ISO, SOC 2, PCI, HIPAA, etc). It’s integrated into Vanta’s broad compliance platform for one hub and interface addressing compliance, security and risk. This includes leveraging up to date employee data already in Vanta from your HRIS to flag at-risk accounts based on employees that have been offboarded or have recently changed teams.

Reduced user license costs

 

The Vanta administrator owning the overall access review process has no need for software licenses to access other systems because Vanta’s pre-built integrations show all account access data from all systems in our interface. Additionally, fast, continuous system access reviews with Vanta means more users are de-provisioned from systems, reducing user license costs.

Additional detail on functionality in the solution, aligned to the access review stages, is below.

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


Let’s take a look at some of the interface:

Use pre-built integrations to automatically pull in access data from systems and employee information from HRIS

Intuitive interface makes it easy for system reviewers to assess risky accounts, single click to maintain/reject access, and add notes for context

Dashboards include high-level metrics, progress of current review, and review history

Ready to learn more about Vanta’s Access Review? Schedule a demo now.  Read VentureBeat's article on why access reviews matter.

Existing customers can contact Customer Success Managers or Account Executives to enable the beta version today.

Written by
Joe Goldberg

Product Marketing

Toni Ng

Product Management

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
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