CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Archer vs Drata

Archer sells a governance, risk and compliance platform that connects enterprise risk, compliance, audit, AI governance, ESG, third-party risk and resilience on shared data and one reporting layer. Drata sells software that helps customers earn and keep trust with continuous compliance, integrated internal and third-party risk, and real-time customer assurance. CISO Tribune files both under Third-party risk and security ratings. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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  • Archer
  • Drata
Archer vs Drata: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
ArcherArcher sells a governance, risk and compliance platform that connects enterprise risk, compliance, audit, AI governance, ESG, third-party risk and resilience on shared data and one reporting layer.archerirm.comDrataDrata sells software that helps customers earn and keep trust with continuous compliance, integrated internal and third-party risk, and real-time customer assurance.drata.com
What it sells
  • IT & Security Risk Management[1]A module that helps organizations manage IT and security risk within the Archer platform.
  • AI Governance[1][2]A module for governing the use and risk of artificial intelligence within an organization.
  • Third-Party Governance[1]A module that manages risk related to third-party vendors and suppliers.
  • Audit Management[1]A module that supports internal audit processes and documentation.
  • Enterprise & Operational Risk[1]A module for tracking and managing enterprise-wide and operational risks.
  • Regulatory & Corporate Compliance[1]A module that helps organizations manage regulatory and corporate compliance obligations.
  • Compliance Automation[17]Automates evidence collection, monitors controls and tracks remediation in one platform.
  • Trust Center[1][9][20]A secure, self-serve destination for reviewing security posture and requesting documents.
  • AI Questionnaire Assistance[21]Centralizes how teams manage inbound security questionnaires.
  • Enterprise GRC[18]Centralizes controls, risks, policies and evidence across business units.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesSan Diego, United States[2]
Founded
Not stated on its pages2020[2]
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
Not stated on its pages
  • September 16, 2026Drata launched Third-Party Risk Management as a standalone offering for criteria-based, evidence-driven vendor risk decisions in a single platform.[25]
  • August 4, 2026Drata announced Limited Availability of AI Agent Governance, which helps enterprises discover, monitor, govern and trace the AI agents running inside their organizations.[24]
  • June 10, 2026Drata introduced AI Agent Governance, a new offering focused on managing risks and oversight requirements of AI agents.[28]
  • June 10, 2026Drata announced a new AI Agent Governance capability that extends its trust platform to cover the governance of AI agents operating inside enterprises.[12]
  • March 24, 2026Drata unveiled a set of agentic AI capabilities covering third-party risk management and customer assurance.[26]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
Archer states that it delivers enterprise capabilities for companies of all sizes. Archer says its products are designed to meet the needs of GRC teams and business users, and its IT risk material describes roles from IT risk analyst to enterprise risk officer. Archer Evolv can be deployed on-premises or as SaaS.From its own pages, Drata sells mainly to security, GRC, and sales teams that want compliance, risk, and assurance work in one platform. Drata describes compliance tooling for small teams that stay audit-ready, and support for unifying governance, risk, and compliance across business units and regions. Drata says it is building AI Governance with select enterprises across financial services, healthcare, and software.
Last verified
November 2, 2026September 27, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Archer and Drata are both filed under Third-party risk and security ratings.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Archer's primary category is GRC and integrated risk platforms; Drata's is Compliance automation.
  • Archer is also filed under AI governance.
  • Archer lists IT & Security Risk Management, AI Governance, Third-Party Governance, Audit Management, Enterprise & Operational Risk and 1 more. Drata lists Compliance Automation, Trust Center, AI Questionnaire Assistance and Enterprise GRC.
  • Drata is headquartered in San Diego, United States.
  • Drata was founded in 2020.

What it sells: Drata

What Compliance Automation does[17]
Compliance Automation centralizes controls and evidence in one place and automates collection across tools. It assigns control owners and routes remediation to the right people. It provides a real-time view of control health and evidence coverage.
What Trust Center does[1][9][20]
Trust Center standardizes how key security information and compliance reports are published, requested, approved, and accessed. It uses structured access requests, approvals, and permissioning. It includes a trust library with reusable, consistent responses.
What AI Questionnaire Assistance does[21]
AI Questionnaire Assistance centralizes how teams manage, track, and collaborate on inbound security questionnaires. Analytics dashboards show AI accuracy, AI completion rate, and total number of responses generated.
What Enterprise GRC does[18]
Enterprise GRC consolidates control requirements, policies, evidence sources, ownership, and workflows into a single system of record. It assigns accountable owners to controls, risks, and evidence with standardized workflows and escalation paths.

Questions about Archer and Drata

What do Archer and Drata sell?
Archer sells IT & Security Risk Management, AI Governance, Third-Party Governance, Audit Management, Enterprise & Operational Risk and 1 more. Drata sells Compliance Automation, Trust Center, AI Questionnaire Assistance and Enterprise GRC.
Are Archer and Drata in the same category?
They share Third-party risk and security ratings. Archer's primary category is GRC and integrated risk platforms and Drata's is Compliance automation.
Where are Archer and Drata headquartered?
Drata is headquartered in San Diego, United States.
When were Archer and Drata founded?
Drata was founded in 2020.
Who are Archer and Drata sold to?
Archer states that it delivers enterprise capabilities for companies of all sizes. From its own pages, Drata sells mainly to security, GRC, and sales teams that want compliance, risk, and assurance work in one platform.
What have Archer and Drata announced recently?
September 16, 2026: Drata launched Third-Party Risk Management as a standalone offering for criteria-based, evidence-driven vendor risk decisions in a single platform.

About Archer

Archer sells a governance, risk and compliance platform that connects enterprise risk, compliance, audit, AI governance, ESG, third-party risk and resilience on shared data and one reporting layer. Archer brings risk, controls, obligations and evidence into one governed system. Archer says regulatory change moves faster than teams can interpret, assess and operationalize it. More than 1,500 organizations run on Archer, including half the Fortune 500.[2][3]

Archer Evolv adds AI-powered intelligence to an existing GRC program and connects regulatory change obligations, controls, policies and assurance evidence. Archer Evolv can be deployed standalone or alongside Archer GRC, on-premises or SaaS. Archer describes a system of record, a system of intelligence and a system of outcomes as one connected foundation that uses existing permissions and audit trail. Archer Evolv turns data from the GRC environment into governed intelligence with AI operators.[3][6]

Workplace is where Evolv operators run, and each operator handles one governed task, such as mapping a new obligation to the controls it touches. In Archer, a reviewer approves the result of an operator before it reaches the customer's controls. Archer Evolv operators run third-party reviews end to end, monitor vendors between assessments and enforce the customer's requirements. Archer Evolv operators monitor technology risks, controls and issues, enforce the customer's standards and rank what needs attention first. Archer monitors 8,000+ regulatory sources across 180 jurisdictions, from SEC and FINRA to DORA, and flags what applies to a business.[3][4]

Archer Evolv assesses each citation against a customer's jurisdictions, products and legal entities. A wizard in Archer captures a customer's jurisdictions, entities, products and themes, and assesses each incoming citation against that profile. Archer parses citations, rulebooks, statutes and a customer's own policies into discrete obligations, each linked to its type, its theme and its source citation. Archer clusters up to 10,000 obligations per assessment by meaning. Archer compares a customer's obligations against the controls it already holds, names the gaps and conflicts and proposes a resolution. Archer Evolv extracts obligations, maps them to controls and business units, routes the assessment to named owners and publishes the result into Archer.[5]

Archer turns regulations and a customer's policies into live AWS Bedrock guardrails that are enforced before the model is invoked. Guardrails are deployed as drafts and go live only after the customer approves them. Traffic is evaluated against guardrails before inference inside the customer's AWS account, and violations are blocked and logged as a governed control breach. Every deployed guardrail is tested on a cycle against the control the customer approved. Findings from each violation route into Archer issue management workflows. Prompt content, model responses, documents, embeddings, customer PII and model weights do not reach Archer, and only the violation event does.[6]

Archer's IT and security risk offering has nine interconnected use cases with workflows that move findings and controls from assessment through closure. Archer's IT risk register catalogs the organization and its IT assets and logs each IT risk against the systems it touches. Archer tests IT controls on a project schedule and pulls in results from automated systems. Archer ranks threats and vulnerabilities by what they put at risk in the business, using asset context and scan results. Archer ships current security frameworks and control catalogs with the use case, including the ISO 27000 series, COBIT 5, the NIST 800 series and PCI DSS. Archer rolls test results up to the primary control and reports compliance for each control set separately. Archer stores evidence in a versioned repository as tests run, tied to the control and the standard it serves.[7][8]

Archer gives financial institutions one connected view of obligations, controls and risk. Archer connects regulatory compliance, third-party risk, operational risk and IT security in one system. Archer helps government agencies unify FedRAMP, CMMC and FISMA obligations. Every control in Archer links back to the exact FedRAMP, CMMC or FISMA requirement it satisfies, and every AI output goes through Expert-in-the-Loop review. Archer tests controls against live evidence, flags a gap as it appears, routes it to an owner and keeps a time-stamped record. Archer translates risk into financial terms based on modeled loss exposure and stated assumptions. Archer states SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 and describes 25+ years as a system of record. The Archer Vulnerability Response Team coordinates the response and disclosure for all product vulnerabilities reported to Archer.[2][3][4][6][7][8][9][10]

Archer on the record

Sources

Archer full record

  1. [1]archerirm.comArcher · archerirm.com · undated page, accessed November 2, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]About Archer – GRC & Risk Management Solutions | ArcherArcher · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Archer® | Regulatory Change ManagementArcher · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Financial Services | ArcherArcher · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Archer Evolv Compliance for AI-Powered Enterprise ComplianceArcher · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Archer Evolv™ AI Compliance | ArcherArcher · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]IT & Security Risk Management | ArcherArcher · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Archer Regulatory & Corporate Compliance ManagementArcher · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Government GRC Solutions | ArcherArcher · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Vulnerability Response Policy | ArcherArcher · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

Drata full record

  1. [1]drata.comDrata · drata.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Drata raises 25m series a to accelerate rapid growth of its security and compliance automation platform 301317989Drata via PR Newswire · prnewswire.com · published June 23, 2021 · Tier A
  3. [3]Agentic Trust Management Platform | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]The Agentic Trust Management Platform | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Drata MCP Server | Run Your GRC Program From AIDrata · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Experience Integrated Risk Management | DRATADrata · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Security Assurance Platform for Real-Time Trust | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Drata Open API | Automate Evidence and Reporting | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Security Questionnaire Automation Software | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Agentic TPRM Assessment | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]CMMC Compliance Automation Software | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Drata Expands Trust Management Platform to Support Governance of Enterprise AI AgentsDrata · published June 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Welcoming Aneal Vallurupalli as Drata’s Chief Financial OfficerDrata · published November 5, 2025 · Tier A
  14. [14]Drata Launches Agentic TPRM Assessment at RSADrata · published March 24, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Drata Reviews, Ratings & Features 2026 | Gartner Peer InsightsGartner Peer Insights · undated page, accessed October 24, 2026 · Tier C
  16. [16]Achieve Continuous Compliance | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]Compliance Automation Software | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  18. [18]Enterprise GRC Software | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  19. [19]Agentic Third-Party Risk Management Software | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  20. [20]Trust Center Software | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  21. [21]AI Security Questionnaire Automation | AIQA| DrataDrata · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  22. [22]Drata AI Features | Agentic Trust Management for GRCDrata · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  23. [23]AI Agent Governance Software | DrataDrata · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  24. [24]Drata Extends Trust Management Platform to Continuously Monitor and Govern AI AgentsBusiness Wire · published August 4, 2026 · Tier A
  25. [25]Introducing Drata Third-Party Risk ManagementDrata · published September 16, 2026 · Tier A
  26. [26]Drata Unveils Industry-First Agentic AI Capabilities to Transform Enterprise Trust WorkflowsDrata Newsroom · published March 24, 2026 · Tier A
  27. [27]A New Brand for a New Era of Agentic TrustDrata · published March 23, 2026 · Tier A
  28. [28]Drata brings visibility, control and auditability to enterprise AI agentsHelp Net Security · published June 10, 2026 · Tier B
  29. [29]Drata Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2G2 · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier C

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