Vanta Inc., a startup that helps companies comply with privacy and cybersecurity regulations, has raised $150 million in fresh funding.

Wellington Management led the Series D investment. It was joined by more than a half-dozen other backers including the venture capital arms of CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. and Atlassian Corp. The round, which was announced today, boosts Vanta’s valuation from $2.45 billion last July to $4.15 billion.

Before a tech firm can sell its software to enterprises in a given industry, it has to demonstrate that the offerings comply with the industry’s data protection standards. San Francisco-based Vanta has built a cloud platform that eases the task. The software can be used to bring a company’s systems into compliance with more than 35 security and privacy standards.

Most data protection frameworks comprise a collection of best practices that companies must implement to achieve compliance. For example, the widely adopted SOC 2 standard usually requires software makers to implement multi-factor authentication. Vanta compares a firm’s infrastructure against the best practices outlined in a given data protection standard and highlights any gaps it finds.

The company’s platform visualizes the compliance data it collects in dashboards. Workers can use an artificial intelligence assistant, the Vanta AI Agent, to ask questions about the data. For example, a user could ask the assistant whether the finance team’s password management policy aligns with SOC 2 requirements.

After a company brings its systems into compliance with a data protection standard, it must undergo an audit to verify the results. Vanta provides a tool for sharing compliance evidence with auditors. The feature allows auditors to request the records they require for an evaluation, as well as share the results of the evaluation once it’s complete.

Vanta also enables companies to share compliance data with prospects. Using the platform, a software maker can create a portal that highlights which data protection frameworks it implements and how. The portal removes the need for potential buyers to manually request that information, which Vanta says can speed up the sale process.

If a prospect nevertheless opts for manual data requests, Vanta provides an AI tool that can automatically answer compliance questions. It also allows software makers to request compliance information from their own suppliers. The platform automates tasks such as reminding a supplier to fill an outstanding compliance questionnaire. 

“Today, Vanta AI can automatically draft more than 80% of your questionnaire responses, and our AI-generated answers are accepted 95% of the time, so you can complete security reviews 81% faster,” founder and Chief Executive Officer Christina Cacioppo wrote in a blog post today.

The company’s platform has been adopted by more than 12,000 organizations. Those customers include Atlassian, Snowflake Inc. and other tech firms. Vanta says that they use its software to keep more than 200 million assets in compliance with data protection frameworks.

It will invest its newly raised capital in product development. It’s working on features that will make it easier to understand how a company complies with data protection standards. Additionally, it plans to release a new version of its AI assistant that can not only answer questions but also take actions on the user’s behalf. 

Image: Vanta