The Story of Six Touches: How Trust Portals Streamline Compliance

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It was 5:30 pm on a Friday when sales emails and Slack messages lit up. A high-stakes deal, months in the making, was on the verge of falling apart. The customer’s privacy and security diligence team would not sign off until a crucial compliance questionnaire was completed. The deal was stuck. Procurement deadlines loomed. The sales team scrambled. Legal and compliance teams braced for late-night negotiations. 

But there was no shortcut. The customer’s team was backlogged and unwilling to rush. The deal stalled, frustration mounted, and blame shifted to the negotiation team. 

How did we get here? A broken diligence process. 

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The six touches 

At many organizations, the customer diligence process is slow and frustrating because it isn’t designed for efficiency. It often takes six distinct “touches” to simply exchange compliance materials — far more effort than most assume. 

Here’s how it typically unfolds: 

1. Customer security and privacy team initiates diligence, requiring security, privacy, compliance, and technical documentation. 

2. Customer procurement team relays requirements and technical security questionnaires to the business unit and seller. 

Figure 1. Standardized security questionnaire  

3. Seller’s account manager receives the request and passes it along internally. 

4. Seller’s compliance team begins compiling documentation, often via a ticketing process. 

5. Legal team negotiates an NDA to protect the materials. 

6. Cross-functional teams (security, audit, compliance) scramble to address non-standard questions, pulling them away from their core responsibilities. 

Figure 2. Six Points of Contact (Bidirectional Flow) 

Each touchpoint risks delay, especially when teams juggle full workloads. At scale, the burden is amplified by: 

Highly skilled professionals spend hours exchanging PDFs and spreadsheets, instead of driving strategic value. 

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The trust portal solution 

Trust portals streamline this entire process. A trust portal is a centralized, self-service hub where customers, vendors, and auditors access security, privacy, and compliance documentation. 

Figure 3. Everbridge Trust Center (https://trust.everbridge.com) 

With a trust portal, the process shrinks from six steps to two — without sacrificing thoroughness: 

1. The customer accesses the trust portal. 

2. They download exactly what they need. 

Figure 4. Two Points of Contact (Self-service) 

This shift reduces friction, accelerates contracting, and gives customers immediate confidence in your organization’s readiness. A modern trust portal provides: 

Beyond compliance: Trust as a strategic asset 

While trust portals were designed to streamline compliance, they deliver other unexpected and lasting benefits. 

1. Customer trust becomes a competitive advantage 

Transparency earns trust. Trust accelerates sales, improves customer satisfaction, and builds long-term loyalty. A trust portal signals commitment to accountability by giving customers easy, direct access to up-to-date information. 

A trust portal signals commitment to accountability by giving customers easy, direct access to up-to-date information.

2. Support for broader commitments 

A trust portal can also centralize: 

3. Streamlined onboarding and renewals 

Customers and internal teams alike benefit from clear, consistent, self-serve access to current materials during onboarding and renewals —  reducing errors, delays, and repetitive questions. 

4. Security ratings integration 

Portals can integrate security ratings (e.g., SecurityScorecard, BitSight, UpGuard) to objectively demonstrate the organization’s security posture. 

Operationalizing a trust portal 

When are you ready? 

Trust portals aren’t just for the largest tech companies anymore. To be effective, you’ll need: 

If your programs are still maturing, the promise of efficiency can actually drive better internal alignment. 

Build vs. buy 

We explored both options when implementing our own trust portal. Initially, we built a basic portal on our customer service platform. It worked — but had limitations: 

Ultimately, we realized the trust portal isn’t just a compliance tool — it’s one of the first impressions we make on customers. Given its direct impact on trust and deal velocity, we needed something purpose-built for their needs. 

We evaluated several vendors, including SafeBase, Whistic, Vanta, and SecurityPal, and selected a commercial solution that delivered: 

For organizations considering the same choice, the key question is not just about cost or control, but about elevating the customer experience during the most sensitive part of the relationship — procurement and diligence. 

Implementing the portal 

We recommend a phased approach: 

Cultural change is just as important as technical implementation. We built a sales enablement course to equip our teams with: 

The future of trust portals 

What’s next? AI-powered portals. Instead of static repositories, future portals will: 

Organizations investing in trust portals today are preparing for this smarter, faster future. 

Trust portals turn bureaucratic friction into strategic advantage. Deals close faster, customers self-serve with confidence, and highly skilled teams focus on creating value — not routing PDFs. 

Perhaps most importantly, with a trust portal, there will be fewer Friday night surprises.