Vanta vs OneTrust product overview
Learn more about the products and how they compare.
Overview
As outsourcing significant business functions is now common practice for most organizations, major third-party data breaches are rapidly taking over news headlines.
Ponemon Institute and IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report found the average cost of a breach has increased from $370,000 to $4.35 million, with third-party involvement listed as one of the main reasons. An eSentire survey from the same year highlights that 44% of firms surveyed have experienced a significant data breach caused by a third-party vendor.
With Gartner reporting 60% of organizations as having 1000+ third-party relationships, effectively managing the cybersecurity risks they create and practicing vendor due diligence proves increasingly difficult.
Information security teams often also rely on manual risk reporting methods which are time and labor-intensive. Many organizations are now turning to automated third-party risk management (TPRM) solutions that automate data breach detection capabilities, provide real-time insights, and streamline remediation workflows.
We assess three TPRM solutions, Vanta, OneTrust, and UpGuard, to help you make an informed decision before investing in the right solution for your needs.
Vanta Overview
Vanta is a U.S. startup based in San Francisco, CA, offering security monitoring, cybersecurity assessment, and certification solutions services for businesses. They help organizations achieve compliance with auditing standards and security frameworks through automated processes and some risk visibility.

Source: vanta.com
OneTrust Overview
OneTrust is a US incorporated company with primary operating offices based in Atlanta and London. The OneTrust platform helps users assess and manage cyber risk from third-party vendors in their digital supply chain.
The OneTrust Vendorpedia solution leverages security questionnaires and remediation workflows through both an exchange and ad-hoc model to help customers reduce risk and improve due diligence efficiency across vendor relationships.

OneTrust Vendorpedia UI. Source: onetrust.com
UpGuard Overview
UpGuard is a third-party risk and attack surface management platform that helps global organizations prevent data breaches, monitor third-party vendors, and improve their security posture. UpGuard’s platform uses proprietary security ratings, data leak detection capabilities, and remediation workflows to proactively identify security exposures. UpGuard’s all-in-one third-party risk and attack surface management software intelligently groups risks into six categories: website risks, email security, network security, phishing & malware, reputation risk, and brand protection.
Usability and the learning curve
Minimizing the amount of time and effort in learning to use a new solution is a critical aspect of delivering on any value proposition.
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Vanta: The Vanta platform offers a simple view of risk visibility and compliance with audit standards. However, the learning curve can be steep with very little customer support.
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OneTrust: A fully cloud-based service with minimal installation criteria required. The OneTrust platform also features an easy-to-use navigation interface, workflow customization, and dashboard reporting functionality.
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UpGuard: High-level summation of risk with the ability to drill down into precise technical details. Each risk is prioritized based on extensive research conducted by the in-house security team, and where possible remediation and protection suggestions are provided.
Capabilities
Vanta, OneTrust, and UpGuard help organizations stay informed about their vendors’ information security risks as part of third-party risk management (TPRM) and vendor due diligence programs.
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Vanta: Vanta’s capabilities are heavily focused on providing security certification and framework compliance services, such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, or HIPAA. They also offer simple risk management services but do not incorporate data leaks, security ratings, or risk scoring for external or internal attack surfaces into their assessment and security monitoring.
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OneTrust: Enables automated workflows for onboarding and offboarding vendors to help users maintain an inventory of their vendors along with relevant information such as risk tiers, service types, and commercial timeframes.
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UpGuard: Offers real-time visibility into any third-party vendor’s risk posture & security rating along with total automation for managing vendor due diligence and remediation programs.
Community support
Keeping informed on product updates and the latest cyber security developments is paramount, with new vulnerabilities and cyber threats emerging daily.
Customers need up-to-date resources and relevant insights to stay ahead of the curve and protect their organizations from emerging cyber risks.
The frequency of publication and presence of community engagement is a key indicator of a company’s mission, focus, and investment in its users.
Vanta, OneTrust, and UpGuard offer comprehensive online resources to educate and inform customers.
Vanta: Offers a Vanta Academy, along with a regularly updated blog, webinar series, various eBooks, and help education resources.
OneTrust: Engages their user community with regular blog posts on topics covering relevant security incidents, global privacy regulations, new feature updates, and industry developments.
UpGuard: UpGuard Summit brings together a community of security leaders from leading companies, explores the future of security, and helps businesses stay secure.
The UpGuard cybersecurity and risk management blog is updated four times a week and the breach research blog has uncovered and secured some of the largest data breaches.
Keeping customers and the cybersecurity community informed on the latest cyber security developments is paramount, with new vulnerabilities and threats emerging daily.
Release rate
Technology is always changing. New vulnerabilities are added to CVE on a daily basis, and attackers are constantly finding new zero-day exploits.
The speed at which a security platform can incorporate changes determines how well it can respond to new threats and customer requests.
Additionally, they should continue to update, adjust, and improve their threat detection methodology to reflect changes to the threat landscape.
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Vanta: Vanta’s current release rate cycles are not publicly available. Vanta does release monthly product updates through their company website.
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OneTrust: States that they make at least monthly updates to their suite of product offerings. OneTrust clearly documents product release notes and guides for customers looking to better understand and use changes in the platform.
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UpGuard: UpGuard has adopted DevOps principles internally to develop, test, and release software continuously, ensuring fast, consistent, and safe releases. UpGuard has a regular release rate every two weeks, with all features, changes, and improvements listed under UpGuard Release Notes.
Pricing and support
Cyber risk platforms can be expensive and the common use of opaque pricing policies often takes power away from the purchaser. With most services offering tiered licensing options and add-ons, finding a solution that fits your needs and budget can prove more difficult without transparent pricing.
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Vanta: Vanta pricing has not been released publicly. User reviews note that Vanta pricing models have been quickly pricing them out of the competition. View estimates for Vanta’s pricing model.
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OneTrust: Offers largely transparent pricing for their multiple offerings via their website. Additionally, OneTrust offers flexible pricing & billing options for small & growing businesses. View estimates for OneTrust’s pricing structure.
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UpGuard: UpGuard has a fully transparent and publicly accessible pricing model which you can view here. If you have any questions, please email sales@upguard.com.
API and extensibility
APIs are useful for technical staff, but not all information security teams have access to developers. In this situation, standard third-party integrations are an essential part of decision-making.
Vanta, OneTrust, and UpGuard offer APIs.
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Vanta: Vanta uses Connectors API to pull security information and allow for compliance automation.
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OneTrust: Offers REST API and SDK for data feed connectivity and workflow management options with external applications.
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UpGuard: Offers a standard API to pull data from UpGuard’s platform into other enterprise applications.
Third-party integrations
Accessing the information in a cyber risk product outside of its graphical interface is important for integrated business strategies and consolidating data to a preferred system.
Vanta, OneTrust, and UpGuard offer integrations into other platforms.
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Vanta: Offers integrations with 100+ third-party services, including AWS and GitHub.
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OneTrust: Offers out-of-the-box integrations with a broad range of third-party platforms. OneTrust’s healthy ecosystem of integration options includes third-party platforms such as ServiceNow, UpGuard, Adobe, RSA Archer, and more.
Customers
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Vanta: Major customers include Quora, Autodesk, Gusto, Shortcut, and Chili Piper.
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OneTrust: Notable listed OneTrust customers include Air Canada, DHL, and Drax.
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UpGuard: Major customers include Accenture, New York Stock Exchange, Tech Mahindra, IAG, Hopin, NSW Government, and Morningstar.
Security rating
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Vanta: Does not provide security ratings.
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OneTrust: Calculates and assigns risk tier categorizations of Critical, High, Medium, and Low based on the security questionnaire information collected from vendors in the platform.
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UpGuard: Security rating scale of 0-950, ranked as A: 801-950, B: 601-800, C: 401-600, D: 201-400, F: 0-200. You can request your free security rating by clicking here.