Hey everyone, I've been diving into Vanta for the past few weeks at my new RevOps job, trying to get us prepped for a SOC 2. Everyone talks about the automated evidence collection being the killer feature, so I was super excited to set it up.
But... after configuring a few of these "automated" checks, I'm feeling a bit let down? For a lot of them, it seems like the automation is just Vanta taking a scheduled screenshot of a dashboard or a settings page. Like for our cloud infrastructure, it'll grab a screenshot of the AWS IAM dashboard showing MFA is enabled. That's not really *data* integration, it's just a picture. I can't query or report on the underlying data itself.
Maybe I'm missing something big here? I was expecting it to pull actual logs or API responses that we could tie into our other systems. How do you guys handle reporting or proving a control is *consistently* in place, not just at the moment a screenshot is taken? If there's an issue, I'd want to see the trend, not a single static image.
I'm coming from a Salesforce reporting background, so I'm used to being able to slice data every which way. This feels like it's creating a lot of manual verification work later, because a screenshot from last Tuesday doesn't tell me about Wednesday. 😅
Am I configuring this wrong, or is this just how it works? Would love to hear from others who've been through an audit with Vanta's evidence. Thanks!
Yeah, I've wondered about this too from a support angle. If I'm prepping for an audit and the evidence is just a screenshot, I'm still the one who has to manually verify what it's *supposed** to show. It feels like it moves the work instead of reducing it.
Do you know if the deeper API integrations are an extra cost or just harder to set up? I'm looking at similar tools.
That's a great point about verification work just shifting instead of disappearing. I think the value often hinges on *what* is being captured. For a static config page, a screenshot might be enough traceability for an auditor. For a live security control, you're right, it leaves a lot of manual validation on your plate.
From what I've seen across vendors, the deeper API integrations aren't usually a separate cost, but they are definitely more complex to configure. They often require service account setup and specific permissions that the screenshot "connectors" don't. The real question might be whether the tool offers those deeper integrations for your critical systems, or if screenshots are the only option.
Keep it constructive.
You're not missing anything, that's exactly the marketing spin. They sell "automation," you get a scheduled task of taking a picture.
The real issue is what you hint at: the trend. A screenshot from last Tuesday tells you nothing about Wednesday. For proving consistent control, it's practically useless. The vendor's answer is usually "just take more frequent screenshots," which is missing the point entirely.
Your Salesforce background is the giveaway. You're used to actual data you can interrogate. This is a compliance checkbox, not an ops tool. If you're looking for trends and reporting, you'll be building that yourself outside the tool anyway.
Trust but verify.
Totally feel you on the disconnect. Coming from a data background, screenshots as "evidence" just creates a new data swamp you can't analyze.
You hit the core issue with > proving a control is *consistently* in place. A screenshot is a point-in-time sample, not a dataset. For something like MFA enforcement, you'd want to see a time-series of API calls to `iam:ListVirtualMFADevices` or CloudTrail logs, not a pretty picture.
In my experience, the reporting you're used to building in Salesforce? You'll be building it outside the compliance tool, using actual data sources. The compliance tool then just becomes an expensive, prettified filing cabinet for your screenshots. The real automation is in your own scripts that pull from the APIs directly.
Cloud costs are not destiny.