3 Time-Consuming Security Functions to Automate in 2025

Originally published by Vanta.

 

Our most recent State of Trust report found that 55 percent of global businesses think security risks for their organization have never been higher. Naturally, to mitigate an increase in risks in today’s complex threat landscape, businesses invest time and money in building a robust cybersecurity posture. 

But many security initiatives take a lot of time, money, and manual support to implement and maintain. This is a problem for a few reasons. Security budgets are tight. Despite increased risk, only about 11 percent of a company’s IT budget is dedicated to security. Leaders say, in an ideal world, that should be closer to 17 percent. 

‍There is also a massive cybersecurity talent shortage, with recent reports estimating there are only enough skilled workers to fill 83 percent of available cybersecurity jobs. 

‍With 2025 budget planning in full swing, it’s time to find practical solutions to cut costs, free up time, and do more with less. Enter, automation. With tools to automate tasks like customer security questionnaires, vendor risk management, and compliance, you can save time and help relieve your security team of manual burdens that prevent them from focusing on more high-value security work.  

Below are three time-consuming tasks that leading organizations will look to automate in 2025. 

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1. Security questionnaires

If you sell technology or services that handle any sort of sensitive data, your prospective buyer will likely ask you to complete a security questionnaire. As a result, questionnaires have become one of the biggest manual burdens on internal security teams. Almost every new deal requires a security review as part of the due diligence phase before a contract goes to signature. For large organizations doing hundreds of deals a month, that’s a huge volume of incoming security questionnaires.

‍To make matters worse, questionnaires are lengthy and redundant. Many prospects use industry-standard formats like CAIQ and SIG—which each include hundreds of questions. Security teams find themselves answering the same questions over and over again for each prospect, gathering and communicating about evidence via lengthy email chains, and dealing with the logistical nightmare that comes with managing questionnaires in a variety of formats—whether that be a form, spreadsheet, or third-party portal. 

‍Based on conversations with Vanta customers, the average company spends 5-15 hours on each security review—potentially more if the prospect is in a highly-regulated industry like financial services or healthcare. 

‍Automating questionnaires is the first step toward reducing the overall time it takes to complete a security review. Companies like Noibu use automation to centralize their knowledge base of security information, auto-fill questionnaire answers, and submit questionnaires in a variety of formats with greater efficiency. With automation, Noibu completes security questionnaires up to 5 times faster. 

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2. Vendor risk management 

Our State of Trust report found that businesses spend an average of 6.5 hours per week just on assessing and reviewing vendor risk.

‍That number isn’t surprising, considering the alarming rise of third-party breaches (46 percent of organizations surveyed say that a vendor of theirs has experienced a data breach since they started working together). Relying on third-party partners and software vendors is also increasingly more common—and often business-critical. On average, organizations use more than 100 SaaS applications. 

‍Your vendors’ security practices are an extension of your own. With the volume of vendors in an average organization’s ecosystem, and the frequency of security incidents, it’s tough to stay on top of vendor security via manual processes alone.  

‍Automation can help in a few different ways:‍

• Automating vendor discovery can help you uncover shadow IT—that could impact your organization’s risk profile—faster. 
• Automated risk assessment helps busy teams prioritize the most high-impact actions to reduce risk.
• Automated remediation helps you implement fixes to mitigate risk faster.
• Automation can automatically extract findings from SOC 2 reports, DPAs, questionnaires, and other sources to reduce time spent on vendor security reviews.

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3. Compliance tasks

Compliance is not only a requirement you have to meet—it's also a sales accelerator. It's a signal that your security posture meets a certain standard, which is especially relevant in enterprise deals. In order to sell to larger customers, businesses need to show proof of compliance so customers feel confident doing business with them. That proof must also be continuous. Buyers want to know that you achieved compliance—and also remained in compliance over time by continuously monitoring your controls. 

‍But compliance is no easy feat. Audits can take several months to complete depending on the type and scope—and you may pursue multiple audits at once to cater to customers and prospects in different geographic regions and industries. With all that in mind, audits and audit prep can become an always-on activity. According to our State of Trust report, global businesses spend 11 working weeks a year on compliance tasks—and 1 in 10 organizations spend over 25 weeks a year on compliance. 

‍But there’s hope. Our State of Trust report also found you can save up to five working weeks a year by automating compliance tasks. Automating evidence collection and continuous control monitoring are both low-hanging fruits if you’re looking for an efficient way to cut costs and reduce resource strain.

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Add automation to the plan this year 

Forward-thinking security leaders know that automation is the key to reducing costs and easing the burden on security teams in 2025. With shrinking budgets and a small talent pool, automating manual tasks is the only way to ensure your security team can focus on high-value initiatives to move the business forward and help you maintain a strong security posture.