Should you build or buy GRC?

The desk read

GRC software is getting disrupted from two directions at once. AI is automating the evidence collection and control validation work that used to justify expensive implementation projects, and open-source platforms like CISO Assistant and Eramba have matured to cover risk registers, compliance frameworks, and audit management for teams willing to self-host. The build case gets serious when your compliance obligations are narrow and your team has the security and ops depth to run a self-hosted stack reliably.

Buying earns its keep when regulatory breadth is wide. Covering SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and PCI simultaneously in a self-built system means building and maintaining the framework mappings yourself, and that's where platforms like Vanta and Drata justify their price. The more frameworks you need to satisfy simultaneously, the more the vendor's pre-built content library offsets the license cost. Teams with a single compliance target and a small vendor footprint have a plausible path to owning this layer themselves.

Vendors in GRC

Each file covers what the product is, its funding history, and when the index last verified it alive.

Frequently asked

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