Vanta Inc., a startup that helps organizations comply with cybersecurity standards such as SOC 2, has raised $110 million in funding at a $1.6 billion valuation.

The funding round was led by Craft Ventures. The San Francisco-based startup said in its announcement of the Series B round today that Sequoia Capital, Y Combinator and other existing backers had participated as well.

As part of their product development efforts, enterprise software makers must ensure that their applications process customer data securely. They do so with the help of industry standards such as SOC 2. Such standards outline a set of cybersecurity requirements that a software product must meet to effectively protect users’ business data.

Vanta provides a platform that eases the task of complying with cybersecurity standards. The platform supports SOC 2 as well as ISO 27001, another widely used standard that has a similar focus. Vanta also promises to simplify compliance with industry-specific data protection guidelines and privacy regulations such as GDPR. 

Usually, compliance initiatives require a significant amount of manual work because there are many requirements to meet. The SOC 2 standard, for example, includes numerous guidelines on how companies should encrypt data and limit user access to records. SOC 2 also requires companies to create organizational procedures for responding to hacking attempts. 

The process is particularly complicated for companies with a lot of internal applications. The requirements specified in standards such as SOC 2 have to be applied across many of the software products that a company uses to support business operations. The more applications there are, the more time is required to achieve compliance.

Vanta promises to automate much of the manual work involved in the process. The startup’s platform provides dozens of integrations for cloud services, cybersecurity software and other applications that companies rely on to support their business operations. Using the integrations, Vanta’s platform automatically evaluates each application to determine if it’s configured in accordance with security requirements.

Companies can use the insights surfaced by Vanta to inform their compliance efforts. The startup’s platform highlights areas for improvement, such as if a company should enhance a certain system’s encryption settings. The platform also provides tools that simplify the creation of cybersecurity reports.

“Vanta’s mission to secure the internet has never been more prescient or more relevant,” Vanta co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Christina Cacioppo (pictured) wrote in a blog post. “Both vendors and buyers need better ways to improve their security and prove that security to one another.”

After a company configures its systems in accordance with a standard such as SOC 2, it has to undergo an external audit to demonstrate compliance. Moreover, once the audit is complete, organizations must ensure that they continue to meet cybersecurity standards as their systems change. Vanta says that its platform can continuously evaluate a company’s systems to detect new compliance issues that may emerge over time.

According to Vanta, its platform reduces the amount of manual work involved in security audits by up to 90%. The result is that companies can achieve compliance with cybersecurity and privacy standards faster.

After its previous funding round last May, Vanta disclosed that it was generating more than $10 million in annual recurring revenue. The startup stated at the time that it had more than 1,000 customers. Today, on occasion of its latest raise, the startup detailed that its platform is now used by more than 3,000 organizations.

Vanta plans to use the proceeds from its latest funding round to enhance its compliance and cybersecurity capabilities.

Photo: Vanta