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Do You Need a Consultant for ISO 27001 If You Already Use Vanta or Drata?

If you are using Vanta or Drata, you are already ahead of many organisations starting ISO 27001 from scratch. The question is whether an ISO 27001 consultant is worth it when the platform already maps controls, collects evidence and chases people for you.

The short answer is: the platform is the engine, but you still need a driver.
This is where an ISO 27001 consultant with Vanta or Drata experience can save you time, rework and awkward conversations with your auditor.

 

 

What Vanta and Drata do really well

Both Vanta and Drata are excellent at the ‘plumbing’ of compliance.

They help you:

  • Map assets and systems against ISO 27001 controls.

  • Set up automated checks across cloud platforms, identity providers and endpoint tools.

  • Collect evidence on a schedule instead of via spreadsheet and email.

  • Track policy acceptance, security training and incident response drills.

For lean teams, this automation is a big step up from manual GRC spreadsheets. If you are running a SaaS business, or need to meet customer expectations quickly, these tools can shorten the path to audit readiness.

What they do not do is take accountability for your design decisions. They will not tell you whether your risk treatment plan makes sense for an Australian financial services firm, or whether your statements about the Privacy Act or APRA CPS 234 would stand up in front of a regulator.

 

Where an ISO 27001 consultant with Vanta / Drata adds value

An ISO 27001 consultant who works with Vanta and Drata every week will not try to replace the platform. Their job is to help you use it properly and avoid gaps that only show up when the auditor starts asking questions.

Typical areas where a consultant adds value:

  • Scoping the ISMS
    Deciding what is in and out of scope is still a human decision. A consultant helps you avoid a scope that is either too narrow (and looks weak) or unnecessarily broad and expensive.

  • Risk assessment and risk treatment
    Vanta and Drata give you templates, but only you can decide what is an acceptable risk. A consultant helps you build a risk register that reflects your business, threat profile and local expectations such as the ASD Essential Eight.

  • Context, interested parties and objectives
    ISO 27001 expects you to define why security matters to your organisation and who cares. Templates help, but auditors can tell when content is generic.

  • Policies and procedures that people will actually use
    Platforms provide policy templates. A consultant tunes them to your environment, legal obligations and culture so staff can follow them and management can sign them without rolling their eyes.

  • Internal audit and management review
    You still need to run these properly and record outcomes. A consultant can guide or perform internal audits so your first external certification audit is not the first time anyone has checked the ISMS end to end.

If you want to see what the consulting side looks like in practice, Siege Cyber outlines its ISO 27001 consulting services here:
https://siegecyber.com.au/services/iso-27001/

 

 

ISO 27001 consultant with Vanta: what changes and what stays the same?

If you already use Vanta, a consultant will not ask you to stop. Instead, they focus on:

  • Configuring Vanta to match your scope and risk profile, not just your default integrations.

  • Reviewing each control to check it makes sense for your tech stack, not just ticking everything on.

  • Making sure your policies, risks and controls in Vanta match what actually happens day to day.

  • Preparing you for how auditors typically use Vanta during an ISO 27001 audit, including what they will click into and what tends to raise questions.

Vanta can handle a large portion of evidence collection and monitoring. An ISO 27001 consultant helps you avoid the situation where everything looks fine in the dashboard, but your Statement of Applicability and risk treatment plan tell a different story.

 

ISO 27001 consultant with Drata: similar goals, different details

With Drata, the story is similar, but the workflow and integrations are a little different. A consultant familiar with ISO 27001 and Drata will help you:

  • Use Drata’s control framework in a way that lines up cleanly with ISO 27001:2022 and any other frameworks you care about (such as SOC 2).

  • Decide which controls to automate, which to keep manual and where to add custom controls that reflect your business, not just the default library.

  • Write evidence descriptions and attach artefacts in a way that auditors find easy to follow.

This matters if you are pursuing both ISO 27001 and SOC 2 or have customers in multiple regions. You want the platform to support that strategy, not dictate it.

If you already have Vanta or Drata and are not sure whether you are using them effectively for ISO 27001, a short advisory session with a consultant can give you a clear view. Siege Cyber offers this as part of our ISO 27001 consulting and can usually tell you in under an hour where the biggest gaps are for an Australian audit.

 

Do you always need a consultant if you have Vanta or Drata?

There are organisations who get through ISO 27001 using only a platform, especially if:

  • they have an experienced security lead who has been through certification before

  • they have the time to read and interpret the standard themselves

Where a consultant becomes useful is when:

  • you are new to ISO 27001 and do not want to learn by trial and error

  • you operate in a regulated sector (for example, APRA-regulated, health, financial services)

  • you need to align ISO 27001 with other obligations such as the Privacy Act, ASD Essential Eight, or SOC 2

  • your leadership wants confidence that the ISMS is not just a paper exercise

In those cases, the cost of a consultant is often lower than the cost of a failed audit or a year of rework because the ISMS was built around the tool, not the business.

 

 

 

How Siege Cyber works with Vanta and Drata

Siege Cyber is an official partner of both Vanta and Drata and works with Australian organisations that have already invested in one of these platforms. In practice, that means:

  • We use your existing Vanta or Drata instance as the system of record.

  • We focus on scoping, risk, policy alignment, control design and audit preparation.

  • We help you configure the platform so that it reflects your actual environment and obligations, not just a generic template.

  • We prepare you for your certification audit so you know what to expect and what evidence your auditor is likely to focus on.

If you want a feel for pricing, Siege Cyber publishes indicative ISO 27001 and compliance consulting pricing here:
https://siegecyber.com.au/#compliance-pricing

 

do you need a consultant if you already use Vanta or Drata?

Vanta and Drata are excellent tools. They will save you a lot of manual effort, especially around evidence collection and ongoing monitoring. What they do not replace is the judgement and experience that comes from running multiple ISO 27001 projects, across different industries, under different auditors.

If you would like someone to sit on your side of the table, make sense of the standard, and help you use your platform properly, Siege Cyber can help.

Start with our ISO 27001 service overview at https://siegecyber.com.au/services/iso-27001/, then get in touch via siegecyber.com.au or email [email protected] to book a consultation and discuss where you are up to with Vanta or Drata and what support you need.