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In today’s fast-paced digital era, managing Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) is no longer optional—it’s critical. As regulatory demands increase and customers become more security-conscious, organizations are under pressure to scale their GRC programs efficiently and effectively. However, many still rely on manual processes, siloed data, and outdated tools, making it difficult to keep up. In fact, organizations now spend an average of 11 weeks per year on compliance tasks, up from 10 weeks in 2023 [1]. It's no surprise that 59% of organizations list automating security and compliance tasks as a top strategic priority Vanta State of Trust [2].
That’s why purpose-built GRC software has become a cornerstone of modern risk and compliance programs. With the right platform, businesses can streamline evidence collection, automate monitoring, align to multiple frameworks, and reduce risk exposure, all without slowing down operations.
At BD Emerson, we help clients implement and optimize GRC strategies across a range of industries. We have seen firsthand how the right platform can transform compliance from a painful checklist into a strategic advantage. In this post, we will walk through the most important evaluation criteria, highlight the best GRC tools in the market today, and explain why we recommend Vanta as the best choice for organizations ready to scale their GRC efforts.
What Are GRC Tools?
A GRC (Governance, Risk, and Compliance) tool is a software application designed to help businesses systematically manage risk, ensure compliance with regulations, and strengthen governance frameworks. These tools streamline the implementation and maintenance of policies, procedures, and controls that align with both internal goals and external regulatory requirements.
Modern GRC tools consolidate various risk, compliance, and audit functions into a unified platform. This integration allows organizations to:
- Assess and monitor organizational and third-party risks
- Automate compliance processes such as evidence collection and control testing
- Ensure adherence to frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, or GDPR
- Maintain accurate audit trails and documentation
- Enable cross-functional collaboration on compliance initiatives
By providing a holistic view of your risk landscape, GRC platforms improve visibility, reduce manual effort, and support data-driven decision-making. Ultimately, they enhance organizational resilience and allow companies to operate more confidently in complex regulatory environments.
What Makes the Best GRC Software in 2025?
While every organization has unique compliance goals, several key features separate today’s best GRC platforms from the rest. Based on our experience advising clients across regulated industries, here are the top criteria we recommend evaluating:
1. Ease of Implementation and Scalability
The best GRC software should be easy to deploy and grow with your business. Whether you are a startup or scaling to multiple business units, the platform must adapt without requiring costly reconfigurations.
2. Continuous Monitoring and Automation
Modern risk environments change quickly. Look for platforms that offer continuous monitoring, automated evidence collection, and real-time alerts, so your team stays ahead of audits and issues.
3. Flexible Framework Support
The best GRC solutions should allow you to manage multiple standards such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and GDPR from a single platform, ideally with control cross-mapping for efficiency.
4. Customizability and Integration
The platform should integrate with your existing tech stack and allow customization of workflows, control sets, and the dashboard, which ensures alignment with your unique operations and risks.
5. Audit Readiness and Reporting
Governance, Risk, and Compliance tools must go beyond task tracking, they should offer dashboards and reporting features that prove ROI to stakeholders and provide insights to drive strategic decisions.
Top GRC Tools to Know
There are many GRC platforms available today, but only a few stand out when it comes to automation, ease of use, and enterprise-grade features. Based on our hands-on experience, here is the top GRC tools list worth evaluating:
1. Vanta
Vanta is a trust management platform trusted by over 10,000 companies globally. It simplifies and automates GRC by centralizing your program and enabling continuous compliance across multiple frameworks.
Best for: Startups, mid-market, and scaling enterprises in regulated industries.
Pros:
- Automates control monitoring, evidence collection, and framework management
- Supports 40+ frameworks with custom controls and integrations
- Provides real-time dashboards for risk, audit status, and stakeholder reporting
- Offers AI-powered questionnaires
- Scales with your organization via flexible workspaces and APIs
- Strong customer support
Cons:
- Pricing can be high for smaller businesses.
- Limited support for on-premise environment.
Why we recommend it: Vanta goes beyond traditional GRC tools by unifying governance and trust-building under one platform. It helps reduce compliance costs, accelerate audit cycles, and improve visibility, all without burdening your team.
2. Drata
Drata is a popular platform among startups and SMBs seeking rapid SOC 2 or ISO 27001 compliance. It emphasizes automation and integrates well with modern SaaS environments.
Best for: Startups and small companies aiming for fast audit readiness.
Pros:
- Easy to set up
- User-friendly
- Strong integrations with engineering tools.
Cons:
- Less customizable for complex environments
- Limited advanced risk features and AI-powered capabilities
- Fewer integrations overall, reducing automated evidence collection options
3. Sprinto
Sprinto is an integration-first, automation-enabled platform designed to simplify security compliance processes. It offers pre-approved, auditor-grade compliance programs that can be launched in just a few clicks, making it ideal for teams that want to reduce manual effort and accelerate audit readiness.
Best for: Startups and mid-sized organizations prioritizing fast, automated compliance.
Key Features:
- Seamless integration with cloud setups for risk consolidation
- Fully automated checks with remediation prompts
- Intuitive task management that nudges users through progress tiers
- Easy connection with accredited auditors
- Continuous evidence captured in an audit-friendly format
Pros:
- Quick and easy setup
- Strong customer support
- Clean, intuitive user interface
Cons:
- Occasionally lacks accurate checks
- Some users report syncing delays across devices
- Supports fewer frameworks (only ~17)
- Limited customization options
- Lacks advanced AI-driven capabilities
Evaluation Criteria
To help you compare options more clearly, we've evaluated the top GRC tools across key capabilities. These criteria reflect real-world implementation priorities such as automation, usability, integration, audit readiness, and scalability. Each tool is scored on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means it does not meet expectations and 5 means it significantly exceeds them.
While all three platforms offer solid capabilities, Vanta consistently stands out for its depth, automation, and scalability. For companies ready to mature their GRC programs, it provides a unified, future-ready solution that reduces risk and enhances compliance without adding operational burden.
Factors to Consider When Choosing the Right GRC Tool for Your Business
No two businesses are alike, that is why the “best” GRC tool depends on your specific context. Here are key factors to consider when making a selection:
1. Compliance Framework Needs
Start by identifying the specific certifications and standards your organization must comply with: SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR, PCI-DSS, etc. Choose a GRC solution that natively supports these frameworks and offers cross-mapping capabilities to simplify multi-standard compliance. Advanced tools allow custom frameworks and testing methodologies that help you align compliance efforts with your internal audit strategy.
2. Audit Support and Automation
Audit prep is resource-intensive. A strong GRC platform should automate control testing, track evidence collection, and maintain audit-ready documentation. Advanced solutions also support task assignment, timeline tracking, and automated alerts for gaps in compliance, reducing prep time and human error. Look for platforms that log evidence with timestamps, support collaboration with auditors directly within the tool, and make audits faster and more transparent.
3. Team Size, Task Management, and Collaboration
A scalable GRC tool should accommodate teams of all sizes and support collaboration across departments, regions, and business units. Features to look for include role-based access controls, task-tracking dashboards, custom workflows, and project progress reporting. These enable better visibility and accountability across your compliance team.
4. Integration and Workflow Fit
The tool should fit seamlessly into your tech stack: AWS, Azure, Okta, Google Workspace, Jira, ServiceNow, Slack, and others. Native integrations reduce friction in data collection and process automation. Bonus if the tool supports custom APIs or webhooks for bespoke use cases.
5. Customization and Risk Framework Flexibility
No two businesses share identical risks. Your GRC platform should allow you to define, categorize, and score custom risks, assign risk owners, and generate tailored reports. For specialized industries, support for custom control sets and testing procedures is a must, especially if you need to demonstrate compliance beyond common frameworks.
6. Scalability and Multi-Entity Support
As your business grows, your GRC software must scale accordingly. Ensure it supports multi-entity structures, flexible workspace configuration, and enterprise-grade user management. Future-proof tools also let you onboard new regulations without overhauling your setup, ideal for fast-growing or global organizations.
7. Vendor and Third-Party Risk Management
Third-party risk is among the fastest-growing compliance concerns. Look for solutions that support automated vendor assessments, due diligence workflows, and ongoing monitoring. Advanced tools also provide questionnaire automation, vendor scoring models, and integration with vendor databases to streamline the risk lifecycle.
8. Reporting, Dashboards, and Executive Communication
Data visibility is key. Ensure your tool provides real-time dashboards, drill-down capabilities, and custom report generation. Exportable reports should support formats for executives, auditors, and regulators alike. Some solutions also support heatmaps and risk matrices for better decision-making.
9. Trust Centers and Stakeholder Transparency
Modern GRC tools often include client-facing trust centers or security profile pages where you can share your compliance posture with clients, partners, and auditors. These features help build trust, accelerate deals, and demonstrate transparency with minimal manual effort.
10. AI and Automation Capabilities
AI can take GRC to the next level. Look for platforms that use it to auto-detect compliance gaps, suggest relevant controls, streamline evidence mapping, process security questionnaires, and recommend risk mitigation actions. These features cut down on manual effort and increase the intelligence of your compliance operations.
11. Cloud Monitoring and Infrastructure Coverage
Ensure the platform can monitor cloud-native infrastructure and SaaS environments. This includes features for access management, identity and permission audits, infrastructure drift detection, and activity logging across platforms. Continuous cloud posture monitoring helps reduce unseen risks.
12. Onboarding, Support, and Localization
Don’t overlook ease of adoption. A good GRC platform should offer guided onboarding, dedicated customer success support, and training resources. If your organization operates internationally, verify support for multiple languages, regional compliance norms, and local time zone availability for support teams.
13. Built-In Metrics and Analytics
A robust GRC tool should give you access to key compliance KPIs and performance metrics, such as control pass rates, risk exposure trends, audit timelines, and issue remediation progress. These metrics can inform not just compliance posture but also strategic risk decisions
14. Partner and Client Collaboration
Some GRC tools allow external stakeholders, such as partners or clients, to access specific parts of your system. This can include secure document sharing, vendor review portals, or compliance attestations. It's especially useful in ecosystems where shared compliance is a differentiator.
Our GRC Approach: Why We Recommend Vanta
We have worked with organizations ranging from cloud-native startups to global service providers. Many of our clients begin their GRC journey with limited visibility and heavily manual processes. By implementing Vanta, they’ve been able to:
- Cut audit preparation time by over 50%
- Achieve compliance with multiple frameworks in parallel
- Automate risk assessments and evidence tracking
- Improve communication with external auditors and internal stakeholders
What sets Vanta apart is not just its feature set, but the experience it creates for GRC teams. Clients consistently report a smoother onboarding process, greater confidence in their compliance posture, and faster business outcomes.
Vanta’s trust management platform combines automation, real-time visibility, and risk intelligence to empower security and compliance leaders. It’s a modern, scalable, and future-ready solution that’s ideal for today’s hybrid and fast-moving organizations.
Conclusion
Choosing the best GRC software isn’t about picking the platform with the longest feature list. It is about finding the solution that aligns with your company’s structure, goals, and regulatory needs. As digital risk and compliance demands increase, it’s clear that manual GRC processes are no longer sustainable.
Modern GRC tools should do more than check boxes, they should help your organization grow with confidence, improve risk decisions, and drive transparency across the business.
At BD Emerson, we believe Vanta stands out as the leading GRC platform in 2025. With its powerful automation, intuitive interface, and unmatched scalability, it’s helping companies turn compliance into a competitive edge.
Need help evaluating GRC tools or implementing Vanta?
Contact BD Emerson to speak with a GRC advisor or schedule a consultation. We would love to help you build a GRC strategy that fits your business and scales with you.
Or, request a Vanta demo to see how modern trust management works in action.
