Streamline Security Vendor Selection with VAC

May 9, 2023 | By IANS Research

Evaluating, qualifying, and managing vendors can be a daunting challenge, but it's critical to an organization's information security strategy. Learn how IANS’ Vendor Assessment Community (VAC) helps you save time with tools developed from our Faculty of security practitioners and combines peer feedback to help you compare vendors and get the most out of your selected tool or service.

The Challenge: How to Choose the Right Security Vendor 

Vendors can make or break your cybersecurity program. The right partner improves your cyber resilience. The wrong one becomes a nightmare, with poor support, never-ending implementation, hidden costs and products that promise results but never deliver.

Selecting a vendor can be a painful process, even if you’re an experienced security leader. It's hard to trust that analysts with vendor-supported business models are impartial. If you and your buying committee can’t agree, you may not get the budget or support you need. Worse yet, attackers can take advantage of delayed implementations, increasing your risk.

Unbiased Guidance on Security Vendors 

The Vendor Assessment Community was developed to provide an unbiased, independent, practitioner perspective from IANS Faculty and industry peers on InfoSec domains and vendor solutions.

Part of the IANS’ flagship Decision Support offering, VAC gives you immediate access to a robust set of resources covering critical infosec domains. 

Unbiased Vendor Decision-Making

  • Real-world implementation experience from practitioners 
  • Unbiased reports not influenced by vendors
  • Guidance for specific use cases, IT environments, size, and maturity

Vendor Management Lifecycle Resources 

IANS Faculty and the IANS peer community are continually evaluating vendors, scrutinizing product demos, and executing POCs so you don't have to start from scratch. VAC members provide valuable case studies detailing their experiences selecting, implementing, and managing cyber solutions helpful for the right vendor fit. As an end-user, you will have access to helpful vendor management tools, policies and guides for any domain and provide support throughout the entire lifecycle.

Value-Added Vendor Management Solutions 

  • Identify and evaluate vendors
  • Manage ongoing vendor relationships
  • Meet your immediate goals and prepare for the future

Figure titled Discover recourses for every stage of the vendor lifecycle


Vendor Solutions that Build Security Programs 

VAC focuses on critical vendor solutions to build the foundation of your cyber program as well as advanced and emerging solutions to extend your security capabilities. 

Example areas of VAC’s InfoSec domains include:

Figure of example areas of VAC’s InfoSec domains

New domains will be added continuously based on both editorial planning and community input.

Connect with IANS’ Security Community 

VAC offers many ways to engage with the cyber community, including members-only webinars, discussion forums and opportunities to request a call with peers or IANS Faculty. You can learn from others’ successes and avoid vendor problems that cause friction. You can also look forward to saving time with research and tools developed from peer feedback to compare vendors and maximize the ROI of your vendor spend.

Not an IANS client? Get in touch to learn more about our VAC and additional resources available to help you streamline the vendor process.

Although reasonable efforts will be made to ensure the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in our blog posts, no liability can be accepted by IANS or our Faculty members for the results of any actions taken by individuals or firms in connection with such information, opinions, or advice.


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