AI SOC2, HECVAT Auditor Accelerates Vendor Risk Assessments at Pima Community College
Challenge
Pima Community College’s vendor risk assessments relied on manual SOC2 and HECVAT reviews. A single analyst would scrutinize documentation for compliance, taking 6-8 hours per vendor, per analyst, per day; limiting number of vendors to review and become a bottleneck for new services procurement and renewals. This process, shared among team members, consumed about 10% of their time, creating inefficiencies in this fast-paced educational setting.
Key Results
FortifyData’s AI Auditor dramatically reduces vendor review times of SOC 2 and/or HECVAT from 6-8 hours to just 1-2 hours. It was noted during this evaluation that the FortifyData AI Auditor reliably identifies compliance issues, gaps and flags potential risks that their side-by-side manual method comparison missed, delivering robust vendor risk management tailored for higher education institutions in Arizona. By automating AI vendor risk assessments, teams have slashed the time dedicated to vendor report reviews from 10% to under 2%, freeing up resources to prioritize proactive security tasks.
Pima Community College, a leading Arizona institution based in Tucson, leverages FortifyData’s AI SOC2 auditor to streamline HECVAT and SOC2 vendor risk assessments, achieving faster compliance evaluations and freeing resources for strategic cybersecurity initiatives.
Pima Community College, serving diverse students across Tucson and southern Arizona with programs in healthcare, technology, business, and beyond, manages an extensive network of third-party vendors to support its operations. As a public community college, it prioritizes compliance with security standards to safeguard sensitive data and uphold institutional trust.
Lorenso Trevino, Chief Information Security Officer and Director of Security at Pima Community College, leads a team where one of the tasks is evaluating vendor security postures amid growing regulatory demands. Seeking to optimize SOC2 and HECVAT analysis, Trevino tried FortifyData’s AI auditor—a solution tailored for efficient third-party risk automation in higher education – and later adopted it in their vendor review process.
Before FortifyData, Pima Community College’s vendor risk assessments relied on manual SOC2 and HECVAT reviews. A single analyst would scrutinize documentation for compliance, taking 6-8 hours per vendor (depending on comprehensiveness of documentation provided by vendor) and limiting throughput to one analysis per day. This process, shared among team members, consumed their time, creating inefficiencies in their educational setting.
“Our college conducted a manual SOC2/HECVAT review,” Trevino explained.
“This involved one analyst reviewing key points in the documentation to ensure the vendor met the minimum requirements to proceed.” These manual efforts hindered timely vendor onboarding and diverted attention from other critical cybersecurity duties.
To address these hurdles, Pima Community College integrated FortifyData’s AI SOC2 HECVAT auditor, automating the analysis of vendor risk reports. This feature “reads” SOC2 and HECVAT documents, identifies compliance gaps, against the standard and delivers structured summaries and dashboards for swift human validation—ideal for institutions navigating complex vendor ecosystems.
Initially skeptical, Trevino’s team cross-verified early results with manual checks.
“I am always skeptical of the results of AI,” Trevino noted.
“As such, we verified our first couple of reports with a separate, manual analysis.”
The AI proved accurate, allowing focus on flagged concerns and building trust in the tool for ongoing third-party risk automation.
The results showed that the report was relatively accurate; however, we gained a significant advantage by focusing only on the areas of concern, thereby reducing unnecessary analysis. Although we will still manually validate certain controls, our results have shown that the analysis provided by the AI auditor is generally trustworthy.
Lorenso Trevino Chief Information Security Officer / Director of Security Pima Community College
Key Benefits:
Implementing FortifyData’s AI vendor risk assessment tool yielded impressive outcomes for Pima Community College. Review times plummeted by over 75%, from 6-8 hours to 1-2 hours per vendor, empowering analysts to process multiple evaluations daily amid other tasks.
Team time allocation for vendor reports dropped from 10% to less than 2%, providing substantial capacity for strategic initiatives.
The auditor not only replicates manual findings but also highlights overlooked issues, strengthening compliance. “Yes, absolutely. [The AI Auditor analysis would] Draw the same conclusions in a fraction of the time, while also highlighting concerns that we may have overlooked,” Trevino affirmed. For higher education, this means more reliable SOC2 and HECVAT analysis without resource strain.
FortifyData’s AI SOC2 HECVAT auditor has revolutionized vendor risk assessments at Pima Community College, delivering efficient, accurate results that support Arizona’s educational cybersecurity needs. By automating compliance checks, the platform ensures institutions like Pima can prioritize secure operations confidently.
As Pima Community College advances, FortifyData stands as a key partner in managing third-party risks. Discover how our AI vendor risk assessment solutions can enhance your higher education security—visit FortifyData.com for more.