State of GRC 2026 Survey: Why Automating SOC 2 Evidence Collection Requires Screenshots
The State of GRC 2026 survey of 795 practitioners reveals that 59% of teams lack commercial tools, relying on spreadsheets for audits. This article breaks down the five biggest takeaways from the report, why CISOs reject traditional platforms, and how automated evidence collection solves the auditor format problem.
The newly released State of GRC 2026 survey by Ayoub Fandi at GRC Engineer confirms what most practitioners already know: the compliance software market is highly fragmented. Out of 795 respondents, a staggering 59% are commercially unaddressed. Instead of using dedicated platforms, they rely on spreadsheets and manual documentation to get through a SOC 2 audit.
Why? Because traditional platforms struggle with the reality of evidence collection. Auditors still demand visual proof, meaning teams are left taking manual screenshots anyway. True automation has to solve the actual workflow problem, not just provide another dashboard.
Here are the five strategic takeaways from the largest independent survey of compliance professionals, and what they mean for the future of audit preparation.
1. What Does the State of GRC 2026 Survey Reveal About the Mid-Market?
The compliance software market is entirely unlike other B2B software categories. In observability, Datadog holds 52% of the market. In ITSM, ServiceNow holds 42%. In CRM, Salesforce holds 21%.
In GRC, the number one "tool" is a spreadsheet.
According to the survey data, 59% of practitioners operate without a commercial compliance platform. This unaddressed majority breaks down into four segments:
- Spreadsheets: 17.7% (93 respondents)
- Custom tools (Jira, Notion, SharePoint): 13.3%
- Open source: 7.2%
- No tool at all: ~20%
No commercial vendor holds more than 18% of the market. The battleground is the mid-market—teams of 2 to 10 people. This segment accounts for 56% of the industry and exhibits the lowest market concentration (an HHI of 1010). Teams at this size are actively experimenting with up to 21 unique tools, trying to find a solution that actually reduces their workload rather than just shifting it.
2. Why Do 73.6% of CISOs Reject Commercial Compliance Platforms?
One of the most surprising findings in the report is the behavior of the people who actually hold the budget. A massive 73.6% of CISOs use no commercial GRC tool. Only 7.4% of CISOs use ServiceNow, compared to 17.3% for the rest of the industry.
CISOs are the most technical demographic in the survey, averaging a technical skill score of 6.5 out of 10. When they evaluate compliance platforms, they do so rigorously—and they frequently choose to build rather than buy. They opt for custom builds (22.2%), spreadsheets (18.5%), or open-source alternatives (14.8%).
This reveals a deep buyer disconnect. Budget holders do not trust monolithic platforms that promise to put compliance on autopilot. They know that when the auditor arrives, an API status check won't satisfy a request for application-level access evidence.
3. How Does the GRC Skills Gap Impact Tool Adoption?
The survey asked practitioners to rate their technical skills on a scale of 1 to 10. The average score is 5.4. Half the industry (50.4%) sits directly in the middle range of 4 to 6.
This creates a massive capability gap. The data shows that 62.3% of mid-skill practitioners already own a commercial tool. They bought the platform, but they cannot unlock its full value. They rely heavily on default configurations because they lack the engineering background to write policy-as-code rules or build custom API integrations.
The career structure in compliance exacerbates this. The seniority ladder is remarkably flat regarding technical growth:
- Entry Level: 3.9
- Intermediate: 5.1
- Manager: 5.2
- Senior Manager: 5.0
- Director: 5.4
A decade of career progression yields less than half a point in technical skill growth. Tools that require a security engineer to configure them will always hit an adoption ceiling in this market.
4. Why Are Open Source GRC Tools Gaining Ground?
Open-source compliance tools are used by 7.2% of respondents (38 users). This puts open source ahead of several well-funded commercial vendors.
The open-source user base is highly skilled, averaging 5.8 out of 10. But the real story is distribution. Out of those 38 users, 17 are consultants.
Consultants make up 29.1% of the total survey respondents, and 64.9% of them use non-commercial solutions. Because each consultant advises multiple clients per year, they act as an massive multiplier. The report estimates that consultants steer roughly 1,480 decisions away from commercial products annually. They recommend what they trust, and right now, they trust open-source frameworks and custom spreadsheet matrices more than paid platforms.
5. Who Owns the Enterprise Segment for Compliance Tools?
While the mid-market is highly fragmented, the enterprise segment is decided. ServiceNow dominates teams of 11 or more people, with 43% of its user base concentrated in this tier. Archer IRM follows a similar pattern, with 52% of its users in enterprise teams.
These platforms win in the enterprise because they are integration buyers. Large teams need a system of record that ties into their existing IT service management workflows. However, the heavy configuration requirements of these enterprise tools make them entirely unsuited for the 51% of GRC teams that have four or fewer people.
Where Traditional SOC 2 Automation Stops
The underlying theme across all 795 responses is what the report calls the "auditor format problem."
A practitioner buys a GRC platform. The platform monitors cloud infrastructure APIs and outputs structured JSON data or dashboard statuses. The external auditor arrives and asks for timestamped screenshots of the AWS admin console, Jira change tickets, and application user lists. The platform's output gets rejected—not because the product failed to check the setting, but because the validator refuses to accept the format.
This is where traditional SOC 2 automation stops. API-based tools are excellent for verifying that an S3 bucket is encrypted. They are virtually useless for proving that a specific manager approved a pull request (SOC 2 CC7.2) or that a terminated employee's access to a custom internal admin panel was revoked within 24 hours (SOC 2 CC6.1).
Because traditional tools lack UI visibility, practitioners are forced back into spreadsheets to track the manual screenshots they still have to take. This completely negates the ROI of the platform.
Automating evidence collection requires meeting auditors where they are. If auditors want visual proof, the automation must capture visual proof. AI agents that navigate interfaces, capture screenshots, validate the contents, and package them into PDF evidence packs bridge the gap between what engineering wants to automate and what the auditor will actually accept.
Learn More About GRC Platform Integration
For a complete guide to bridging the gap between monitoring dashboards and actual audit deliverables, see our guide on integrating application-level evidence automation with Drata, Vanta, and GRC platforms, including how automated screenshot capture works alongside your existing tech stack.
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