Senior Product Manager

Vanta has appointed Sarah Scharf as chief marketing officer. Scharf joined Vanta in 2020 as its first product marketer and has since led every function within the company's marketing organisation. Reporting directly to CEO Christina Cacioppo, she will oversee product marketing, brand, communications, content, growth, and revenue marketing. During her tenure, Scharf led Vanta's positioning through three category shifts: from automated compliance to trust management to agentic trust. The appointment comes as Vanta surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenue, reaching the milestone nine months after hitting $200 million. Over 16,000 companies, including Snowflake, GitHub, and Ramp, use Vanta's platform. Before Vanta, Scharf spent seven years at Google in product marketing roles. She holds a degree from Stanford University.

$4 billion Vanta has a new CMO who wants to make security compliance marketing 'a little zingier' Aug 12, 2026, 4:00 AM PT Security-compliance software startup Vanta wants to become known as a "trust company" that can also have a bit of fun. It's entrusting a new CMO to get it there. Vanta has promoted its VP of marketing, Sarah Scharf, to CMO, the company exclusively told CMO Insider. In an interview, Scharf said the two tasks at the top of her to-do list are to solidify the Vanta brand's association with trust among its clients and potential customers, and to reinvent how the company gets marketing done internally in the age of AI. "How can we capture the moment and also reposition Vanta in a way to showcase how we help businesses of all sizes instill and maintain that trust in a world where AI makes it harder to come by and maintain?" Scharf said. Founded in 2018, Vanta offers an automated platform that helps companies assess the security and compliance of their products. While it's best known for helping startups complete processes like SOC 2 audits, it's branched out to offer services to larger enterprise customers, in areas such as assessing third-party risk and AI governance. Its customers include Snowflake, GitHub, and the Golden State Warriors. Vanta said it was valued at about $4 billion in a funding round last year. Vanta has sought to stand out from its competitors with playful marketing, such as plastering San Francisco with billboards reading: "Compliance that doesn't SOC 2 much." Scharf, who joined the company in 2020, said she wants Vanta to continue marketing "with a wink," while other security brands tend to focus on fear and posturing to emphasize their strength. "We're a compliance company, we're giving you security information. Some of that is going to be bland and boring, but what can we do to make it just a little zingier?" Scharf said. "We want to be seen as trusted experts, someone you can come to with a question," she added. "We're not arrogant or looking down." While these marketing efforts can help humanize the brand in an often dusty sector, Sarah Ashdown, consumer marketing and revenue director at the consultancy Manifesto Growth Architects, said Vanta can't simply build "trust" into a platform or claim it through positioning alone. "Trust is earned over time through the quality of the service, the outcomes customers achieve, and the relationship a business builds with them," Ashdown said. Where Scharf is investing Vanta's marketing budget. Scharf said the company is investing its marketing budget in areas such as influencer marketing and podcasts. This summer, it launched a video podcast called "The Tabletop," in which it invites chief information security officers to role-play live "situation-room"-style scenarios, such as how they would respond to a security breach. "That's what people want to watch and engage with, and also has the added benefit now that LLM search is blowing up, and high-authority, owned content is very additive for LLM discovery," Scharf said. Internally, Scharf said Vanta is using AI to streamline repetitive tasks, like resizing advertising assets and editing content. It's also using tools like Midjourney to prototype campaigns. When hiring, Scharf said she is screening candidates for AI proficiency - though "not from a tokenmaxxing perspective."

The 5 best Secureframe alternatives in 2026. Secureframe is a well-reviewed compliance automation platform, holding around 4.7 on G2 across 700+ reviews. But its pricing is fully custom and gated behind a sales call, reviewers report renewal increases of 5 to 15%, and its AI questionnaire answers draw recurring accuracy complaints. Whether you are price-checking before a renewal or found the questionnaire feature underwhelming, here are the 5 best Secureframe alternatives in 2026. If the questionnaire feature is why you are shopping, ResponseHub is a dedicated replacement: cited AI answers, unlimited usage, $124/month, self-serve trial. For the full compliance suite, Vanta and Drata are the bigger-ecosystem rivals, Sprinto is the reported price floor, and Hyperproof serves complex multi-framework programs. At a glance. | Tool | Best for | Published pricing | Free trial | Questionnaire automation | | ResponseHub | Security questionnaires, RFPs, DDQs only | $124/mo Starter, $332/mo Business, unlimited usage | 7-day, self-serve | Core product, cited AI answers | | Vanta | Certification automation, largest ecosystem | Not published; sales-led | No | Paid add-on | | Drata | Certification automation, trust center | Not published; sales-led | No | Via SafeBase, tied to platform | | Sprinto | Startup-budget compliance | Not published; sales-led | No | Add-on, token-limited | | Hyperproof | Multi-framework GRC programs | Not published; sales-led | No | Feature in TPRM module | Competitor details last verified: August 2026 Why teams look for Secureframe alternatives. Secureframe's review base is strong, so the complaints are specific rather than general. Three stand out. Pricing opacity: quotes are fully custom, and reviewers report renewal increases of 5 to 15% arriving as surprises. Questionnaire AI accuracy: multiple recent reviews describe AI-suggested answers that were incorrect or incomplete, which matters because wrong answers on a security review carry real risk. And tier gating: advanced questionnaire automation reportedly sits in higher tiers, so the feature that might justify the platform costs extra. Teams whose main use case is questionnaires end up paying suite prices for a feature that reviewers say needs babysitting. The accuracy-first questionnaire tool Best for: Teams whose Secureframe complaint is the questionnaire feature If Secureframe's AI questionnaire answers have burned you (a recurring theme in its recent reviews), the fix is a tool where answer quality is the entire product. ResponseHub grounds every AI answer in your own uploaded policies and past questionnaires, and shows its work: each answer cites the exact policy, page, section, and sentence it came from, with a confidence score telling reviewers where to look harder. No generic training-data guesses. It ingests Excel and Word questionnaires and web portals via a Chrome extension, exports answers back into the buyer's original file, and improves with every completed questionnaire. Usage is unlimited on all plans, so a busy quarter does not change your bill. * Questionnaires, RFPs, and DDQs only: no compliance monitoring * No trust center Starter $124/mo, Business $332/mo. Unlimited usage. 7 days, self-serve 2. Vanta. The biggest ecosystem Moving from Secureframe to Vanta is a sideways move up the market: broadly the same certification automation with the category's largest integration library, auditor network, and brand weight, which can matter when enterprise buyers ask what you use. The costs are structural: no published pricing (third-party median around $20,000 a year), questionnaire automation as a paid add-on, and the category's loudest renewal-increase complaints at 30 to 50% in recent reviews. Worth it for ecosystem depth; check what your renewal will look like in year two before signing year one. Not published. Third-party estimate: ~$20k/yr median. 3. Drata. The trust center leader Best for: Teams that want proactive trust sharing alongside certification automation Drata's differentiator against Secureframe is SafeBase, the trust center it acquired for $250M in 2025. If your strategy is reducing inbound questionnaires by letting prospects self-serve your security documentation, Drata now does that better than anyone in the suite category, with AI questionnaire assistance included in the SafeBase product line. The familiar catches apply: quote-only pricing (third-party median around $25,000 a year), sales-led buying, reported renewal increases, and questionnaire tooling that requires the platform. A strong upgrade path if trust-center strategy justifies the spend. Not published. Third-party estimate: ~$25k/yr median. 4. Sprinto. The reported price floor Best for: Startups for whom Secureframe's quote was still too high Sprinto's pitch is Secureframe's feature set at a lower reported price: third-party estimates start around $6,000 to $8,000 a year for core certification automation aimed squarely at early-stage startups. Reviewers like the guided compliance journey; the same reviews flag a token-metered questionnaire AI with overage charges, an agent app requirement, and support that thins out at busy moments. As a first compliance platform on a tight budget, it is credible. As a questionnaire solution, the metering makes it the weakest option on this list. Not published. Third-party estimate: ~$6k-15k/yr. 5. Hyperproof. The step up in GRC depth Best for: Teams that outgrew certification-first platforms If you are leaving Secureframe because your compliance program got more complex rather than because of price, Hyperproof is the direction to look. It is a GRC operations platform: cross-framework control mapping, audit workflows, risk registers, and TPRM, built for dedicated compliance teams managing several frameworks at once. Expect enterprise dynamics: third-party estimates from a ~$12,000 floor to a ~$40,000 median, no self-serve trial, and reviewer complaints about learning curve and reporting flexibility. Questionnaire response lives inside the TPRM module as a supporting feature. Not published. Third-party estimate: ~$12k/yr floor, ~$40k median. How to choose. Split the decision by complaint. If questionnaire answer quality drove you here, that is a tool problem, not a tier problem: ResponseHub's cited answers fix it for $124/month, verifiable on a free trial. If pricing drove you here, get competing quotes from Sprinto (reported floor) and Vanta or Drata (bigger ecosystems) and negotiate renewal caps in writing. If program complexity drove you here, evaluate Hyperproof. Only ResponseHub on this list lets you try before a sales conversation, which is itself information about how these vendors sell. Frequently asked questions. Why are Secureframe's AI questionnaire answers sometimes wrong? Recent G2 reviews report AI-suggested answers that are incorrect or incomplete. Dedicated tools ground answers differently: ResponseHub, for example, generates answers only from your uploaded policies and past questionnaires, citing the exact source passage with a confidence score, so reviewers can verify each answer in seconds. What is the cheapest Secureframe alternative? For questionnaire automation alone, ResponseHub publishes the lowest price in the category at $124/month with unlimited usage. For full compliance automation, Sprinto has the lowest third-party-reported entry pricing at roughly $6,000 to $8,000 a year. Does Secureframe raise prices at renewal? Multiple recent reviews report renewal increases of 5 to 15%. This is a category-wide pattern: Vanta and Drata reviewers report renewal increases too. If you sign any sales-led compliance contract, negotiate renewal terms upfront. Can a small team skip compliance suites entirely? If you already hold your certifications (or do not need them yet) and the actual workload is answering security questionnaires from buyers, then yes: a dedicated tool like ResponseHub handles that from $124/month without a platform subscription. If you need to earn and maintain certifications, you will want a suite. Related comparisons. Its verdict Secureframe is one of the better-reviewed platforms in its category, which makes its weak spots (opaque pricing, renewal surprises, and a questionnaire AI that reviewers do not fully trust) stand out more. Suite shoppers should quote Vanta, Drata, and Sprinto against it. But if the questionnaire feature is what you actually use, stop paying suite prices for it: ResponseHub does that job with cited, verifiable answers at $124/month, unlimited. The 7-day trial is self-serve, so you can test it on a real questionnaire today. Security questionnaires don't have to be this hard Get started. Get started in under 5 minutes with its self-serve trial or contact ResponseHub for a demo