BlogSecurity
Security7 min read

Compliance Automation: Why Manual Compliance Costs 5x More

Automating compliance checks reduces audit preparation from months to days.

By Richard Ewing·

Manual vs. Automated

Manual compliance: 2-4 months of preparation per audit, $50-150K in engineering time, evidence collection across dozens of spreadsheets. Automated compliance: continuous monitoring, real-time dashboards, 1-2 weeks preparation, $20-50K in tooling.

Automation tools: Vanta, Drata, Secureframe. $10-30K/year. Saves $80-120K in engineering time per audit cycle.

Like this analysis?

Get the weekly engineering economics briefing — one email, every Monday.

Subscribe Free →

More in Security

Published Work

This article expands on ideas from my published work in CIO.com, Built In, Mind the Product, and HackerNoon. View published articles →

📊

Richard Ewing

The Product Economist — Quantifying engineering economics for technology leaders, PE firms, and boards.