SOC 2 and HIPAA for Healthtech: Vanta, Drata or Secureframe
Healthtech teams should pick SOC 2 software that maps both SOC 2 and HIPAA explicitly, because passing SOC 2 controls does not guarantee HIPAA coverage. A business associate agreement can be missing for a subprocessor touching protected health information while every SOC 2 control passes, since SOC 2 does not ask who signed a BAA.
Vanta, Drata and Secureframe all support dual-framework mapping. Where they differ is how much of the healthcare-specific work, BAA tracking, clinical policy review, hospital procurement familiarity, they take off your plate versus leaving to your own team.
Vendors Covered in this Article
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Where do SOC 2 and HIPAA controls actually overlap?
Encryption in transit and at rest, access logging, and multi-factor authentication satisfy requirements in both frameworks, and a platform that maps them once saves real duplicate work. But HIPAA also requires things SOC 2 doesn't touch directly: a signed business associate agreement with every business associate or subcontractor that handles protected health information, a documented breach notification process, and workforce training on your PHI policies. A platform that only shows you SOC 2 progress can leave those HIPAA-specific gaps invisible until an auditor or a hospital's compliance officer asks about them directly.
Vanta, Drata and Secureframe on PHI-specific coverage
Vanta's automated vendor discovery, built for tracking every SaaS subprocessor a company uses, does double duty for healthtech by flagging which of those vendors touch PHI and need a BAA on file, then tracking whether one exists. Its scale and integration breadth also mean hospital procurement teams recognize the platform, which can shorten diligence with larger health system customers.
Drata's continuous infrastructure testing is useful for platforms handling high-volume clinical data feeds, FHIR or HL7 integrations across multiple cloud accounts, where verifying that PHI stays isolated by tenant matters as much as verifying it's encrypted. A 99.9% availability target still allows only about 8.76 hours of downtime a year1, and for a platform clinicians depend on during patient visits, Drata's continuous monitoring of uptime and failover testing evidence is a genuine fit, not just a compliance checkbox.
Secureframe pairs its automated platform with compliance support staff, so ask whether anyone on your assigned team has HIPAA and SOC 2 audit experience and whether they'll review your clinical policies rather than leaving you to adapt a generic template. For a small digital health team without an in-house compliance hire, that hands-on review is often worth more than another integration.
When a digital health startup should pick Vanta
If your priority is reaching a first SOC 2 and HIPAA-ready state quickly, and your PHI exposure comes mostly through a manageable set of third-party vendors rather than custom clinical infrastructure, Vanta is a common shortlist choice, but compare each platform's vendor discovery and auditor partnerships against your own stack before you commit.
When a digital health startup should pick Drata
If you're running your own clinical data pipelines across multiple cloud environments, ingesting FHIR or HL7 feeds from hospital systems, or maintaining strict tenant isolation for PHI at scale, Drata's continuous infrastructure-level testing catches configuration drift before it becomes a finding, which matters more as the environment gets technically complex.
Why some healthtech teams choose Secureframe instead
A lean clinical team without a dedicated compliance or security hire sometimes needs someone to actually read the policy, not just generate one from a template. Secureframe's model leans on former auditors reviewing your specific setup, which can matter more than raw integration count if your gap isn't tooling but expertise. Related reading: Vanta vs Drata vs Secureframe covers the general comparison, and SOC 2 for fintech covers a similar dual-framework problem in payments.
A common mistake: treating the BAA as a one-time signature
Teams often collect a signed business associate agreement during vendor onboarding and then never revisit it. That misses two things a hospital's compliance officer will ask about: whether the vendor's own security posture changed since signing, and whether the vendor still needs access at all. A subprocessor added for a pilot feature that shipped and was later deprecated can keep its API keys and its BAA long after anyone uses it, which is the kind of stale access a SOC 2 auditor may sample.
Treat vendor and BAA review as a recurring task tied to your access review cycle, not a one-time step during procurement. If you're using a platform's vendor discovery to surface subprocessors automatically, cross-check that list against your BAA register on a schedule, quarterly is reasonable for most digital health teams, rather than only when a new hospital contract triggers a diligence request.
Checks to run on every business associate agreement over time:
- Confirm a signed agreement exists for every vendor that touches protected health information, not just the ones flagged during onboarding.
- Ask whether the vendor's own security posture has changed since the agreement was signed.
- Review the agreement whenever the vendor's role or the data it handles changes.
- Track these reviews in your compliance platform so a hospital's compliance officer can see current answers.
What Good Looks Like
A digital health team at a strong compliance standard maintains an accurate, continuously updated map of every vendor that touches protected health information, with a signed BAA on file for each one, alongside its SOC 2 evidence, rather than discovering gaps when a hospital's compliance officer asks.
Building The Capability (5-Stage Skill Ladder)
How to Get Started
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Vanta fits a healthtech team that needs to reach a first SOC 2 and HIPAA-ready state quickly and wants automated tracking of which vendors touch PHI.
Drata fits a healthtech team running its own clinical data infrastructure across multiple cloud environments that needs continuous, technical control testing.
Secureframe fits a lean clinical team without in-house compliance staff that wants former auditors reviewing its actual policies, not just a template.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does SOC 2 compliance automatically cover HIPAA requirements?
No. The two frameworks share technical controls like encryption and access logging, but HIPAA also requires signed business associate agreements with every vendor touching protected health information, breach notification procedures, and PHI-specific workforce training. A platform needs to map both frameworks explicitly, not just show SOC 2 progress, or HIPAA-specific gaps can go unnoticed.
Do all three platforms track business associate agreements?
Vanta, Drata and Secureframe all support BAA tracking as part of vendor risk management, but the depth varies. Vanta's automated vendor discovery is particularly useful here because it surfaces subprocessors you might not have documented yourself. Whichever platform you choose, confirm during setup that BAA status is tracked per vendor, not just assumed.
Is a smaller compliance platform ever the better fit for a health startup?
It can be, if your gap is expertise rather than integrations. A very lean clinical team without in-house compliance staff sometimes gets more value from a platform that pairs software with former HIPAA auditors reviewing the actual policies, since a template alone won't catch a gap specific to your clinical workflow.
Sources
Where we quote a benchmark, we show its source. Other figures in this guide are estimates or general guidance, so check them against your own numbers.
- Allowed downtime per year by availability target. Google SRE Book, Table 1-1 Availability table, 2016.
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