Category comparison
Vanta, Drata, and runtime evidence.
Two different artifacts, produced at two different moments, answering two different questions. They are not substitutes, and most teams that adopt one end up wanting the other.
Published 13 August 2026 · Last updated 13 August 2026
The short answer
Vanta and Drata are compliance automation platforms. They collect and maintain the evidence that a security programme exists and is being operated — policies, control ownership, access reviews, vendor records, and continuous checks against a framework such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, or ISO 42001. Both do that work well, at a level of automation that used to take a team of people and a quarter of their year.
Glacis is a runtime evidence layer. It sits at the boundary where an AI system acts and produces a signed receipt for each governed action, recording which controls ran and what each one decided.
The difference is the moment of capture. A programme platform answers the question does the control exist and is it being operated. A runtime receipt answers a narrower one: did the control run on this action, and can somebody outside the company check that without taking our word for it. Neither answer substitutes for the other.
Side by side
Read this as two rows of a stack rather than two columns of a bake-off. Nothing in the right-hand column replaces anything in the left.
| Dimension | Vanta, Drata (compliance automation) | Runtime evidence (Glacis) |
|---|---|---|
| Question it answers | Does the control exist, and is it being operated? | Did the control run on this action, and what did it decide? |
| Unit of record | The control, the policy, the periodic review | The governed action — one inference, tool call, retrieval, or agent decision |
| Cadence | Continuous checks against configuration and process | One signed record at the moment the action happens |
| Framework span | Broad: SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001, HIPAA, GDPR and more | Narrow: the record-keeping half, landing most directly on EU AI Act Article 12 |
| Who can verify | An auditor working with the operator, under an engagement | Anyone handed the receipt, with no account and no cooperation from the operator |
| Trust model | The reviewer trusts the platform collection and the operator attestations | The reviewer checks Ed25519 signatures and SHA-256 hash commitments |
| Where it runs | Hosted, integrated with cloud, identity, HR and ticketing systems | Inside the operator infrastructure, at the AI action boundary |
| What leaves the environment | Configuration and metadata pulled from connected systems | A hash, a control outcome, and a signature — never the payload |
| Strongest use | Reaching a certification and holding it without a fire drill each year | Answering the AI rows in a customer security review with something checkable |
Capabilities in this category move quickly. Treat the left-hand column as a description of the category rather than a current feature list, and validate scope directly with each vendor.
What Vanta and Drata do well
It is worth being precise about this, because the runtime evidence argument is often made by people who have never had to hold a certification and do not appreciate how much work these platforms remove.
- Continuous control monitoring. Rather than a scramble in the weeks before an audit, the programme is checked against its framework on an ongoing basis, and drift surfaces as a task rather than a finding.
- Integration breadth. Both pull evidence directly from cloud accounts, identity providers, endpoint tooling, code hosting, and ticketing, which is where the underlying facts actually live.
- Framework mapping. One body of collected evidence is projected against several frameworks at once, so the second certification costs a fraction of the first.
- Programme operations. Policy libraries, control ownership, onboarding and offboarding checks, vendor reviews, and the calendar of periodic tasks that a real programme needs and nobody enjoys running by hand.
- Trust centres. A place to publish posture to prospects, which shortens the front half of a security review considerably.
- AI framework coverage. Both have added support for AI management systems, and it does the same job for ISO 42001 that their earlier work did for information security: it tracks whether the required policies, owners, risk assessments, and reviews are in place.
If a team is trying to reach SOC 2 or ISO 27001, a compliance automation platform is the right purchase and a runtime evidence layer is not a substitute for it. Buying receipts instead would leave the certification unearned.
What a runtime receipt adds
A programme platform records that a control exists and that somebody owns it. That is a claim about the organisation. A runtime receipt is a claim about one event.
One record per governed action
A receipt identifier, the OVERT format version, the named workflow, a signed timestamp, the outcome of each control that ran, the guardrail action, a hash of the input, a hash of the output, one or more signatures, and the position in a hash chain plus the hash of the record before it.
Checkable without trusting us
Signatures and hash commitments are verified in the reviewer browser. No account, no cooperation from the operator, and none of the underlying data. A receipt carries no prompt text, no output text, and no records — only commitments to them.
That second property is the one that does not have an equivalent on the programme side, and it is structural rather than a matter of effort. An audit report is a professional opinion rendered by a firm the reader is asked to trust. It is a good instrument, and it is not the same instrument as a signature a reader checks themselves.
The narrowness matters too. A receipt proves faithful recording under an enrolled identity. It does not prove that every action was captured, it does not prove a system is safe, and it is never a compliance certificate. An evidence pack states the scope it covered rather than implying it covered everything. Read the OVERT standard if you want the field-by-field definition, or verify a receipt in the browser to see what a reviewer actually does.
Where the two meet
The overlap is not in the tooling. It is in a specific moment: the AI rows of a customer security review.
Enterprise and health-system questionnaires have added rows on model egress, prompt and output handling, guardrail behaviour, agent tool permissions, and logging of automated decisions. A reviewer working through those rows has an audit report in one hand and a set of questions the audit report was never designed to answer. The honest response to most of them today is an architecture diagram and a description of intent.
A receipt turns one of those rows into an artifact. Not all of them — most rows are still about the programme, and the programme platform answers those better than anything else. But the rows that ask whether a control ran are the rows where a signed record replaces a paragraph of prose.
Practically, teams attach an evidence pack to the review rather than wiring the two systems together. A pack is assembled from signed receipts and exports against NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, the EU AI Act, and OSCAL, so it lands as a normal piece of audit evidence alongside everything the programme platform already collects.
When you do not need runtime evidence
Sales pages rarely include this section, which is why it is worth writing down.
- If nothing in the estate acts autonomously. An internal drafting assistant with no tool access, no external calls, and no bearing on a regulated decision does not need a per-action record, and adding one is cost without a reader.
- If no counterparty is asking. Runtime evidence earns its place when somebody outside the company — a customer, a regulator, an auditor, an underwriter — has started asking a question the existing artifacts cannot answer. If that has not happened, the programme platform is doing the job.
- If the certification is the goal. Reaching SOC 2 for the first time is a programme problem, and receipts do not shorten it.
- If the AI is not yet in production. Pre-deployment testing and evaluation answer a different question, and answer it better. Runtime evidence begins at the point a system starts acting on real inputs.
The clearest signal that the calculus has changed is a security questionnaire that comes back with AI rows nobody can answer, or a buyer who asks how they would know a guardrail fired. Until then, the programme is the priority.
Questions we get asked
Is Glacis an alternative to Vanta or Drata?
No. They solve a different problem and they are frequently deployed together. Vanta and Drata automate the work of running a security programme and holding a certification. Glacis produces a signed record of what a runtime control decided on a single AI action. Replacing one with the other would leave a real gap in either direction.
We already hold SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Why would we need runtime evidence?
Those certifications describe a programme, and reviewers still accept them for most of a security questionnaire. What changed is that enterprise and health-system questionnaires now carry AI-specific rows on egress, logging, and control execution, and an audit report does not answer a row that asks whether a guardrail fired on a specific inference. If nobody is asking you that question yet, you do not need runtime evidence yet.
Do compliance automation platforms cover ISO 42001 and the EU AI Act?
Increasingly, yes, and that coverage is genuine. Both vendors have added AI-specific framework support, and it does the same job for an AI management system that their earlier framework support did for information security: it tracks whether the required policies, owners, risk assessments, and reviews are in place. That is most of what ISO 42001 asks for. EU AI Act Article 12 is the part that sits outside it, because it asks for logs generated automatically by the system while it operates, not for a record that a logging policy exists.
Can a compliance automation platform ingest runtime receipts?
In practice teams attach an evidence pack rather than wire the two systems together. A pack is assembled from signed receipts and exports against NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001, the EU AI Act, and OSCAL, so it lands as a normal piece of audit evidence alongside everything a programme platform already collects. The receipts stay independently checkable whichever system stores them.
Who can verify a runtime receipt, and what do they need from us?
Anyone you hand it to. The checks run in the reviewer browser: Ed25519 signature validity, the SHA-256 composite hash binding, structural and temporal consistency, and a Merkle inclusion proof where one is present. The reviewer needs no account, no cooperation from you, and none of your data. That independence is the whole point of the artifact, and it is what an audit report, by its nature, cannot offer.
Does a runtime receipt make us compliant with anything?
No, and no product does. Frameworks ask you to define policy, assign ownership, tier risk, and keep records. A receipt addresses the record-keeping half, and only for what happens at runtime. It is never a compliance certificate or a safety guarantee, and an evidence pack states the scope it covered rather than implying it covered everything.
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