✅ Feature availability: While the Core Risk Management is included on all plans, Advanced Risk Management features are only available as an upgrade or add-on. Refer to Vanta Plans and Pricing for details.
Risk Management in Vanta helps you identify, assess, and manage risks across your organization so you can understand your exposure and take action where it matters most. It supports key workflows like building and organizing risk scenarios, conducting risk assessments, tracking mitigation work, and reporting on risk posture over time as part of your broader security and compliance program.
You’ll find Risk Management features in the Risk section of your account. From maintaining your risk register to evaluating risk and sharing updates with stakeholders, Vanta helps you manage risk consistently and keep your program aligned as conditions change.
🎓 Training opportunities: Explore the Vanta Academy—take our self-paced course or join an instructor-led workshop on Risk Management. If you can’t attend live, you’ll receive a recording after.
Getting started
Vanta offers two levels of Risk Management depending on your plan. Find your setup steps below:
Core Risk Management
Core Risk Management
To get started with Risk Management in Vanta:
Manage user permissions: Assign access to ensure the right people can view, add, and approve risks.
Add risk scenarios: Populate your registers by adding risk scenarios manually, importing from a spreadsheet, or using Vanta’s risk library. You can also add risks via API or using our MCP.
Start risk assessments: Assign owners, evaluate risk, document treatment plans, and submit assessments for approval.
Advanced Risk Management
Advanced Risk Management
To get started with Risk Management in Vanta:
Create risk registers: Set up how your risks are organized by creating one or more risk registers based on your teams, business units, or risk domain.
Manage user permissions: Assign access to ensure the right people can view, add, and approve risks within each register.
Customize risk settings: Configure your scoring framework, categories, and custom fields to align with how your organization evaluates risk.
Add risk scenarios: Populate your registers by adding risk scenarios manually, importing from a spreadsheet, or using Vanta’s risk library. You can also add risks via API or using our MCP.
Start risk assessments: Assign owners, evaluate risk, document treatment plans, and submit assessments for approval.
Risk management
From the Risks page, you manage the inventory of risk scenarios across your organization and keep your risk register up to date—and be sure to check out the Risk library page to add common risk scenarios written by our GRC experts.
Add and organize risk scenarios using Vanta’s risk library, manual entry, or spreadsheet import.
Group risks into one or more risk registers to reflect your teams, business units, or use cases.
Control access by assigning permissions at the register level to ensure the right people can view and manage risks.
Link related context, such as vendors or enterprise risks, to maintain a complete view of risk across your organization.
Search, filter, and customize your register view to focus on the risks that matter most.
📖 Learn more: Adding and Managing Risks
Risk assessments
From the Risks page, you can conduct risk assessments for each risk scenario to evaluate, prioritize, and manage risk.
Assign risk owners to ensure each scenario is reviewed and maintained by the right person.
Evaluate inherent and residual risk by scoring likelihood and impact using your risk framework.
Document treatment plans by choosing how to address each risk and linking related controls or tasks.
Submit assessments for approval and manage multi-step approval workflows.
Track assessment status to understand which risks are in progress, pending approval, or complete.
📖 Learn more: Conducting Risk Assessments
Action tracker
From the Action tracker page, you can track and manage the work tied to your risk scenarios to ensure treatments are completed after a risk assessment is approved.
View and manage tasks linked to risk scenarios in one place.
Assign owners and due dates to track accountability and progress.
Connect tasks to your task tracker integrations or manage them directly in Vanta.
Monitor task status to understand which actions are open, in progress, or complete.
See how mitigation work maps back to specific risks and controls.
📖 Learn more: Tracking Risk Treatment
Reports and snapshots
Use Vanta’s reporting tools to monitor your risk posture, track changes over time, and share insights with stakeholders and auditors.
View real-time risk distribution and trends to understand your current exposure.
Create snapshots to capture a point-in-time view of your risk posture for audits.
Generate risk assessment reports as exportable PDFs to share structured summaries.
Build and customize risk reports to track trends, filter data, and communicate insights over time.
📖 Learn more: Creating Risk Snapshots & Reports
Vanta AI
Use the Vanta Agent to ask questions about your risk program and get insights, summaries, and recommendations in real time.
Find and filter risks using natural language, such as identifying overdue assessments or risks missing treatment plans.
Prioritize work by surfacing your most critical risks and areas that need attention.
Understand relationships between risks, controls, tasks, and vendors.
Identify gaps or inconsistencies, such as duplicate risks or missing information.
Get guidance on next steps to improve your risk posture and support decision-making.
📖 Learn more: Vanta Agent
Risk settings
The Settings page is where you configure how risk is structured, scored, and managed in your organization. Set up these preferences early so your risk scenarios and assessments reflect your internal methodology from the start.
Risk settings are organized into the following sections:
Section | Description |
Preferences (auditor view) | Control whether risk registers and action trackers are visible to auditors. |
Choose whether to automatically map recommended controls when adding risks from Vanta’s risk library. | |
Define categories to organize and filter your risk scenarios. | |
Add and customize fields to capture additional risk details across registers. | |
Configure how likelihood is defined and scored in your risk assessments. | |
Configure how impact is defined and scored in your risk assessments. | |
Define how risk scores are grouped into levels (for example, Low, Medium, High). |