Okay, I’ve been looking at our vendor invoices for the last quarter, and I keep circling back to the line item for the “AI Security Review” add-on. After digging into what it actually does for our team, I’ve got a spicy take: this feels like pure margin padding disguised as a necessary feature.
Here’s my breakdown. We’re on a mid-tier team plan for our campaign analytics platform. The core platform already includes:
* Role-based access controls (we set editor/viewer/admin permissions)
* Audit logs for user activity
* SOC 2 compliance as part of the base certification
The add-on, which costs $15/user/month on top of our seat fee, essentially provides a monthly PDF report that summarizes… the audit log data we already have access to. It flags “anomalous” logins (like a login from a new city) but so do our basic Google Workspace alerts. For us, the actual security posture hasn’t changed.
I think vendors are banking on the fear factor around AI and data security to get teams to opt-in without scrutiny. Unless you’re in a heavily regulated industry with specific reporting needs, I’m struggling to see the value.
Has anyone else done a deep dive on this specific add-on with their vendor? What did your security team actually need that wasn’t in the standard tier? I’d love to compare notes, because if we’re all paying for the same redundant report, that’s a pretty significant collective invoice bloat.