What Happens to Your Compliance Data When You Switch GRC Platforms?

Before you make any decision about switching compliance platforms, there’s a question you need to answer honestly: what happens to everything you’ve built?

The compliance data in your current GRC platform represents months or years of accumulated work. The idea that switching platforms means “starting fresh” is technically true in some important ways, and dangerously oversimplified in others. Here’s what actually happens.

The data migration reality

Significantly less transfers than you might expect, and what does transfer requires substantial manual effort. This isn’t incompetence or malice — it’s a structural issue. Vanta and Drata use fundamentally different data models. There is no automated conversion between the two: every control, evidence association, and integration connection has to be re-established in the destination platform.

What transfers vs. what doesn’t

Data Type	Transfers?	What Actually Happens
Policy documents	Partial	Files must be manually re-uploaded. Approval timestamps and version history are lost.
Uploaded evidence files	Manual	Must be downloaded from current platform, re-uploaded, re-associated to controls.
Vendor records	Manual	Manual re-entry or CSV import if platform supports it.
Personnel records	Manual	CSV import. Compliance task completion status resets to zero.
Controls and framework mapping	Manual	Must be re-mapped in destination platform’s framework. No automated conversion.
Integration-discovered state	Does not transfer	All integrations must be reconnected from scratch.
Automated test history	Does not transfer	New platform starts accumulating test data from connection date.
Evidence stored as URL links	Does not transfer	Link-based evidence has no file to move. Must be re-submitted or re-linked.
Audit history and change logs	Does not transfer	Stays in source platform. Export and archive before decommissioning.

The evidence link problem in detail

In both Vanta and Drata, you can submit evidence by uploading a file directly or by submitting a URL linking to evidence stored elsewhere — a Confluence page, a Google Drive document, a GitHub pull request. URL-linked evidence is convenient, but when you migrate platforms, those URLs have nothing to carry.

There’s no file to download and re-upload. The link still points to the same external resource — you can re-submit the same URL in the new platform — but the submission history, the control association, and the evidence review record are all lost.

For active compliance programs that have heavily used link-based evidence, this can substantially increase migration effort. If 40–60% of your evidence library is links rather than uploaded files, your evidence migration isn’t “re-upload the files” — it’s “manually re-submit every piece of link-based evidence to the correct control.”

Why audit history is mostly non-recoverable

Your audit history — the record of which evidence was reviewed, when, by whom, what findings resulted, and how they were remediated — is maintained separately by each compliance platform. When you leave a platform, that history can be exported but cannot be imported into a new platform in a meaningful way. The new platform’s records start from the day you began using it.

Before you decommission your current platform, do a comprehensive export: all audit reports, evidence packages, your full change log, and test history. Store these in a long-term archive accessible to your security and legal teams. Keep this archive accessible for as long as your audit requirements dictate — typically 3–7 years.

Integration state reset

Every integration in your current compliance platform must be reconnected from scratch in the new platform. Budget a minimum of half a business day for integration reconnection on a typical 10–15 integration stack. Add a 24–48 hour stabilization window: after reconnecting integrations, the new platform’s automated tests start running and the first couple of days frequently show failures that resolve automatically as integrations sync.

What to do before you start

1. Export everything — policies, evidence files, vendor list, personnel records, audit trail — before doing anything else.
2. Document your complete integration list including any custom configurations.
3. Audit your evidence storage format — what percentage is uploaded files vs. URL links significantly affects your effort estimate.
4. Notify your auditor at least 60 days before your next audit.
5. Don’t decommission until migration is verified complete — the old platform is your safety net.

Use the migration assessment tool to get a personalized complexity score, or the cost calculator to model whether the switch makes financial sense. For the full step-by-step process, see the Vanta to Drata migration guide or the Drata to Vanta migration guide.