What Is GRC? Compliance and Vendor Risk, Answered

GRC stands for governance, risk and compliance: the way an organization sets policy, manages security and operational risk, and proves it meets standards like SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR and PCI. In practice it usually means a lot of manual work, mapping controls to each framework, chasing evidence, and reviewing the vendors you depend on. Scrutineer is a GRC and third-party risk platform that automates that scrutiny: it maps your controls across every framework, collects evidence automatically, monitors continuously, and scores the risk of every vendor you trust. The wedge is simple: scrutinize any company, including your own. Read about GRC software.

No, and that is by design. Scrutineer is decision-support and audit readiness, not certification. It maps your controls, collects and monitors the evidence, and flags gaps so you walk into the audit organized rather than scrambling. The actual SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA attestation is issued by an accredited, independent auditor. Scrutineer gets you ready and keeps you ready; it does not issue the certificate and never claims to guarantee a pass. See audit readiness.

It depends on your current posture, but because control mapping and evidence collection are automated rather than manual, most teams reach a clear, prioritized readiness view in days rather than weeks. From there you close the flagged gaps in priority order. Because monitoring is continuous, you stay audit-ready year round instead of scrambling the month before the audit.

Scrutineer maps your controls to SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR and PCI, and it does so through a single crosswalk, so one control proves its requirement across every framework at once. Map a control for SOC 2 and you can immediately see where it satisfies ISO 27001 or HIPAA, so the work you do for one audit counts toward the next. Enterprise plans add custom and bespoke frameworks for your specific obligations. SOC 2 ISO 27001 HIPAA GDPR PCI

Most tools lead on one side of the house. Vanta and Drata are strong at automating your own compliance; SecurityScorecard is strong at scoring third-party risk from the outside. Scrutineer runs both as first-class work in one platform: continuous compliance for your own organization across SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR and PCI, and full third-party and vendor risk, assess vendors, auto-answer and score inbound security questionnaires, monitor vendors continuously and produce risk scores. You scrutinize any company, including your own, from one place. Compare Scrutineer to Vanta.

Scrutineer assesses a vendor across their external surface, certifications and questionnaire history, then returns a letter grade and a 0 to 100 risk score with category detail for network, app security, patching, DNS, data protection and compliance posture. It keeps watching, so when a vendor changes, the score updates and you are alerted. The same evidence powers security questionnaire automation, so the questionnaires your prospects send you are answered from your current posture rather than by hand. See vendor risk management.

Yes. Scrutineer connects to your cloud, identity and ticketing systems through read-only integrations and collects only the configuration and logs needed to prove your controls. Your evidence is yours, it is never sold, and it is never used to train public models. Because every control links to the evidence that proves it, the result is also more transparent and easier to defend in an audit or a customer trust review.

Scrutineer stores the evidence it collects so it can attach each item to the control it proves, keep it current as your systems change, and produce an organized, audit-ready report on demand. The evidence library is yours and stays with your account. You control which systems are connected and what is collected, and it is used only to prove your compliance and answer questionnaires, never sold or used to train public models.

No. Every plan is paid and prices are in USD. Instead of a free tier, the interactive Scrutiny Desk demo on the homepage is your free trial: pick a framework to audit your own company, or assess a vendor, and watch Scrutineer build the report before you pay. There are no per-questionnaire fees, and an accredited auditor still issues your attestation. See pricing.