Compliance automation platforms like Drata and Vanta have a compelling pitch: connect directly to your cloud infrastructure, automatically collect evidence, and watch your compliance dashboard turn green. It's fast, it's easy, and it feels like progress.

But there's a fundamental problem with this model — you're granting access to your most sensitive environments to a platform whose core competency is evidence collection and framework mapping, not cloud security. Your AWS account, your Azure tenant, your GCP project — these are your crown jewels. Every integration into those environments should be justified by the security value it provides, not by the convenience it offers an auditing workflow. A CSPM platform connecting to your cloud environment makes sense — that access is the product, and it returns real security findings. A compliance automation platform connecting to your cloud environment is a different equation entirely: it's pulling raw infrastructure data to auto-generate evidence, and it's doing so with access it doesn't need to fulfill its actual purpose. When a compliance platform asks for read access across your entire cloud environment, you should pause and ask: is this the right architecture, or just the convenient one?

This is where the distinction between compliance theater and actual security becomes critical.

When you let a compliance automation tool connect directly to your infrastructure and tell you what is or isn't compliant, you've inverted the relationship. The tool is now driving your security posture. Its framework mappings define what matters. Its checks define what "good" looks like. You're not designing your security program — you're adopting someone else's interpretation of one.

True security architecture starts with your risk profile, your threat model, and your control design. Compliance should validate that architecture — not define it. When you design your own controls first and then demonstrate compliance against them, you maintain ownership of your security program. When you let a compliance platform scan your environment and generate the narrative, you've outsourced that ownership entirely.

A more principled approach places purpose-built security tools between your cloud environment and your compliance automation platform. Instead of Drata or Vanta reaching directly into AWS, you connect CSPM platforms with AppSec capability, vulnerability scanners calibrated for reachability — and let those tools produce findings that feed into your compliance evidence.

The architecture is a clean chain:

  Security / Engineering
  Design controls, define posture, own the program
          │
          ▼
  Cloud Environment
  (AWS, Azure, GCP) — the crown jewels
          │
          ▼
  CSPM + AppSec  ←──→  Vulnerability Scanning
  (Orca, Wiz)          (Aikido, etc.)
          │
          ▼
  Compliance Automation
  (Drata, Vanta, etc.)
  Evidence collection & reporting

Security and engineering teams design the controls and own the posture. The cloud environment is where those controls are implemented. CSPM and vulnerability scanning tools connect to the environment and produce security findings. Compliance automation consumes those findings as evidence — but never touches the environment directly.

This is deliberately more work than a direct integration. That's the point.

You control what compliance sees. Your security tools produce findings. You decide which of those findings constitute compliance evidence, how they're contextualized, and what narrative they support. You're curating your compliance posture rather than letting a platform auto-generate it from raw infrastructure data.

You reduce blast radius. Your CSPM and vulnerability scanning tools are purpose-built for cloud security. They need cloud access — that's their job. But your compliance platform doesn't need that same level of access. By keeping compliance automation one layer removed from infrastructure, you limit the number of systems with direct credentials to your environment.

You own your security design. When your security tools report findings and those findings feed compliance, you are in the driver's seat. You designed the controls. You chose the scanners. You defined what "compliant" means in your environment. The compliance platform is documenting your program, not dictating it.

You get real security outcomes. CSPM platforms and vulnerability scanners are built by security practitioners to find real issues. They understand cloud-native risks, misconfigurations, and attack paths. Compliance automation platforms are built to map controls to frameworks. Both have value, but conflating them produces a false sense of security — dashboards full of green checks that may not reflect your actual risk posture.

This approach is harder than clicking "Connect AWS" in a compliance platform. That friction is a feature — it is the security program. But it helps to know what the work actually entails.

Our typical recommendation is to use third-party CSPM and vulnerability scanners in lieu of connecting compliance automation directly to production environments. The transition involves several concrete workstreams:

Control Re-assessment. Review your existing control set with fresh eyes. Which controls are currently "met" only because a compliance platform is auto-collecting evidence from your cloud environment? Which controls reflect genuine security decisions you've made versus framework defaults the platform applied for you? This is where you reclaim ownership of your security design.

Evidence Re-assessment. For each control, evaluate how evidence is currently being generated and whether it actually demonstrates the control's effectiveness. Evidence that was auto-pulled from AWS by a compliance platform may need to be replaced with findings from your CSPM or scanner — findings that are more meaningful, more contextual, and more reflective of your actual posture.

Connecting CSPM with AppSec Capability. Select and deploy a CSPM platform that goes beyond infrastructure misconfiguration and includes application security capabilities. You want a tool that understands your cloud posture and your application attack surface — not just whether an S3 bucket is public, but whether a vulnerability in your application layer creates a reachable path to sensitive data.

Connecting Vulnerability Scanning Calibrated for Reachability. Not all vulnerabilities are created equal. Deploy scanning that is calibrated for reachability — tooling that can distinguish between a critical CVE buried behind three layers of network controls and one that's directly exposed to the internet. This produces evidence that reflects actual risk, not just raw finding counts.

Reviewing AWS Integration. Audit the existing integrations your compliance platform has into AWS (or Azure, GCP, etc.). Understand exactly what access has been granted, what data is being pulled, and which of those integrations can be removed once your security tooling is producing the necessary evidence.

Adjusting Systems. Reconfigure your compliance automation platform to consume evidence from your security tools rather than pulling it directly from infrastructure. This includes updating evidence mappings, adjusting automation workflows, and validating that your compliance posture is maintained through the new architecture.

This is real work, and it takes time. But every step in this process strengthens your security program in ways that a direct-connect compliance integration never will.

When building out your compliance architecture, consider these principles:

Connect security tools to infrastructure, not compliance tools. Let Orca, Aikido, Wiz, or your scanner of choice connect to your cloud environments. These tools are designed for that access and provide security value beyond compliance.

Let security tools be the interface between your environment and compliance. Your CSPM and vulnerability scanners should be the only tools with credentials to your production infrastructure. Compliance automation consumes their output — it doesn't need its own line into your cloud accounts.

Keep compliance automation at arm's length from infrastructure. Your Drata or Vanta instance should consume pre-processed evidence from security tooling, not generate it by crawling your cloud accounts directly.

Design your security program first. Define your controls, select your tools, and build your architecture based on your risk profile. Then map that program to whatever compliance framework you need — SOC 2, ISO 27001, CMMC, or otherwise. Don't let the framework dictate your architecture.

The goal is not to avoid compliance automation. These platforms provide real value in evidence management, audit readiness, and continuous monitoring. The goal is to ensure they serve your security program rather than replace it.