In Secureframe’s Cybersecurity and Compliance Benchmark Report 2026, nearly half of companies (46%) said a lack of compliance certification has delayed sales. Meanwhile, 61% reported that achieving compliance was required to win or renew contracts.

As compliance becomes a requirement for client acquisition—not just a regulatory requirement—organizations are rethinking how they share their security and compliance documentation with prospects, customers, partners, and other stakeholders. Trust Centers have emerged as one of the most effective ways to demonstrate real-time information security maturity and reduce friction across security reviews.

This guide explains what a Trust Center is, why more organizations are adopting them, and how they can serve as both a compliance accelerator and a sales enablement tool.

What is a Trust Center?

A Trust Center is a dedicated webpage or portal where organizations publicly communicate the measures they are taking to protect sensitive data and comply with regulatory and industry standards. It centralizes key information and documentation—including real-time control status, compliance reports, policies, penetration testing summaries, and other artifacts in one location—making it easier for stakeholders to verify that the organization takes security seriously.

Although security questionnaires and manual document sharing are still the most common ways organizations exchange compliance information today, Trust Centers offer a more scalable and proactive alternative. And with newer frameworks like FedRAMP 20x now requiring CSPs to self-host and continuously share authorization data, Trust Centers are quickly becoming the modern expectation for demonstrating compliance.

With a Trust Center, visitors are able self-serve or request documents with information on data security and compliance, like SOC 2 reports, with an automated NDA workflow. This is beneficial for two major reasons:

• On the front end: By centralizing all security and compliance documentation, policies, and real-time data and enabling visitors to self-serve or request this information, Trust Centers help customers, prospects, partners, investors, and other stakeholders easily and quickly find the assurance they need that your organization is taking security seriously.
• On the back end: Rather than filling out bespoke SIG questionnaires or emailing the same sensitive documentation over and over to stakeholders that request it, admins can review, approve, and/or deny requests and enforce an NDA for these resources directly in the Trust Center dashboard. This significantly simplifies document request management, saving your team valuable time and resources.

Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of a Trust Center below.

What are the benefits of a Trust Center?

A Trust Center can help your organization showcase the measures you’re taking around security and compliance, on one dedicated page. Let’s take a look at why this is beneficial.

Builds trust 

A Trust Center provides a transparent, centralized view of the security protocols and stringent compliance standards your organization follows, which helps stakeholders quickly understand your organization’s security posture.

According to our latest Benchmark Report, 33% of organizations now face pressure from investors and partners to demonstrate security maturity—making proactive transparency increasingly valuable.

Speeds up security reviews

One of the biggest drivers of friction during security reviews or other parts of the due diligence process is the constant back-and-forth around document requests. A Trust Center enables self-service access to common reports and controlled access to sensitive documents, allowing teams to complete due diligence significantly faster.

Provides a competitive advantage

In a market where 40% of companies are pursuing compliance specifically to reach enterprise customers and 38% have lost revenue or competitive bids due to lack of certification, a Trust Center allows organizations to signal maturity before a deal even begins. 

This proactive transparency differentiates you from competitors who only share documentation reactively or manually or have not achieved the same level of security maturity and operational rigor. This was the case for energy startup ElectricFish, which got SOC 2 compliant to improve security and trust with utilities prospects. 

Supports continuous compliance

Trust Centers that integrate with compliance platforms—like those powered by Secureframe—display real-time data and continuous assurance that your organization is meeting key security controls. Customers and other visitors can see that your organization isn't just compliant at one point in time but continuously compliant. 

This is increasingly important as more frameworks, including FedRAMP 20x, move away from static annual assessments.

Meets evolving framework requirements

Traditionally, frameworks like FedRAMP required cloud service providers (CSPs) to undergo annual assessments and upload evidence and documentation to third-party government repositories.

FedRAMP 20x changes this. Under the new Authorization Data Sharing standard, CSPs may share authorization data directly with agencies through their own Trust Center—as long as it meets FedRAMP requirements. This exempts them from older processes and FedRAMP requirements to share data via the FedRAMP Secure Repository on the USDA Connect Community Portal or other secure repositories.

Image source: RFC-0011 FedRAMP Pilot Standard for Storing and Sharing Authorization Data

This shift marks a broader movement toward:

• real-time visibility,
• continuous monitoring,
• decentralized data sharing, and
• cloud service providers owning their compliance communication.

Organizations that adopt Trust Centers today get ahead of these emerging expectations and reduce future operational burden.

Reduces sales cycle friction or lost deals

Trust Centers can also speed up or even unblock stalled sales cycles by providing prospects with the compliance reports and assurance they need that you’re capable of keeping their data safe. This saves your team from filling out tedious and bespoke security questionnaires or losing deals where a questionnaire isn’t enough. 

This was the case for the AI startup My AskAI, which was getting bogged down by questionnaires and losing deals entirely with enterprise prospects because of a lack of a SOC 2 report.

Trust Centers vs security questionnaires

Security questionnaires remain a common method for validating a vendor’s security posture, but they can be time-consuming, repetitive, and difficult to scale. In our Benchmark Report, 70% of organizations said they still rely heavily on questionnaires and RFPs, despite 73% saying they regularly need to share a third-party audit report.

Trust Centers provide an easier, more scalable solution than filling out questionnaires or email reports one-off for every prospect. A Trust Center provides:

• centralized documentation,
• real-time control status,
• automated NDA workflows, and
• flexible access permissions.

As a result, organizations reduce manual work, accelerate due diligence, and provide a more transparent customer experience. With nearly one-third (31%) of organizations already using trust pages or security dashboards to prove their security posture, the shift toward more proactive methods of assurance is already in motion.

Those that adopt a Trust Center now will be leading the way—rather than being left behind. 

How to build a Trust Center

Use the best practices below to build or optimize your Trust Center to showcase your security and compliance posture and build client trust.

1. Add documentation

To start, determine the security certifications, frameworks, policies, and compliance documents that are relevant to your organization and your customers. 

A Trust Center may include the following documents:

• Reports or certificates proving adherence to frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, or HIPAA, among others
• Penetration test reports
• Policies such as a privacy policy or AI policy

Some of these documents—like your privacy policy or responsible disclosure policy—can be made publicly available and linked directly from your Trust Center. 

More sensitive materials, such as SOC 2 reports or detailed pen test results, should be gated behind an access request workflow and NDA. This balance ensures visitors can easily find what they need while still protecting information that cannot be shared with the general public.

2. List controls that are continuously monitored

Compliance reports and certifications are key to demonstrating how your organization adheres to the highest standards of security. By keeping these up-to-date, you show that your organization is not just secure or compliant at a point-in-time but over time. 

To further make this clear to prospects and other stakeholders, consider listing controls that are continuously monitored by your automation platform. This real-time data helps ensure your Trust Center is proof of your continuous compliance, not static posture. 

3. List subprocessors that handle personal data on your behalf

Since subprocessors play a crucial role in handling, processing, or storing sensitive information, openly listing them demonstrates your organization’s commitment to accountability and compliance with data protection regulations like GDPR. 

This transparency also helps to mitigate any consumer concerns about data privacy and security risks, especially for customers that want to assess your full data ecosystem before making a purchasing decision.

4. Include frequently asked questions

Many organizations also include an FAQ section in their Trust Center to answer common due diligence questions upfront. 

By aligning these with frequently asked questions related to data protection, privacy, and security policies and procedures during procurement, onboarding, renewal, or another stage of the customer lifecycle, you can save your team from answering the same questions over and over and proactively address any objections or concerns.

5. Keep it up-to-date

Ensure your Trust Center reflects the most current information by regularly updating it with real-time security monitoring data, new certifications, and compliance documents. This ongoing maintenance builds trust with customers, showing that your organization is actively committed to maintaining a strong security posture.

Which compliance management provider has the best Trust Center?

Our latest compliance benchmark report shows that organizations are scaling their compliance programs. Over half (52%) of organizations maintain compliance with more than one framework, with smaller organizations averaging 1.6 frameworks and larger companies averaging double that at 3.2 frameworks.

This is helping organizations:

• Strengthen internal security posture and prevent incidents (62%)
• Win or renew contracts (62%)
• Fulfill industry, regulatory, or legal requirements (48%)
• Move upmarket or attract enterprise clients (40%)
• Satisfy partners or investors (33%)

But it’s also adding complexity, with organizations citing manual audit preparation (23%)

And demonstrating compliance to customers or partners (20%) as their biggest challenge heading into 2026

Today, the best compliance management providers are helping organizations address both these challenges by offering the automation and AI they need to reduce the operational burden of achieving, maintaining, and demonstrating compliance. Look for a provider that can automate the compliance process end-to-end, from gap assessments to evidence collection to continuous control monitoring to Trust Center management. 

Use the following criteria to help evaluate different providers’ Trust Center offerings to determine the best fit:

1. It integrates with your continuous monitoring tool to display real-time data

A Trust Center is most effective when it provides real-time data. It should integrate with a compliance platform that automatically pulls data from your security stack to show the current status of your controls.

2. It enables self-service and NDAs for more sensitive documentation

A Trust Center is designed to make it easy for visitors to download security documents or request access to more sensitive ones. Look for a solution that has automated workflows for document approvals, including non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), so visitors can easily request more sensitive documents and workflows for visitors to simply download less sensitive ones. 

For example, in Secureframe’s Trust Center, visitors can download two resources (FedRAMP 20x 3PAO Coalfire Validated Assessment Methodology and FedRAMP 20x KSI Validation)m but they must request other documents like their latest SOC 2 Type 2 report, CMMC Level 2 Certification, and FedRAMP 20x Low Authorization Letter.

Image source: Secureframe’s Trust Center page

3. It’s highly customizable to match your branding

A Trust Center should reflect your brand, not the compliance management provider’s. A branded, professional Trust Center provides a seamless experience for prospects and customers coming from your website, social, or other channels, reinforcing the perception that your organization takes security seriously. 

Opt for a solution that enables you to incorporate your logo, brand colors, a custom domain, as well as custom HTML sections and CSS to make your Trust Center exactly match your brand playbook.

Image source: Secureframe’s Trust Center feature page

4. It provides you with maximum control to show as much (or as little) content

The best solution allows admins to display relevant certifications, compliance documents, and security controls while offering full control over what information is public. This flexibility makes it easy for organizations to showcase their strengths without revealing unnecessary details. 

For example, does the solution allow you to reorder, hide, show, or remove certain sections? You don’t want to be stuck with any default sections, just as you don’t want to be stuck with default branding. 

5. It streamlines the document request management process as much as possible

Ensure your Trust Center solution has automated workflows for handling document requests, including NDA approvals, to reduce friction and improve response times. By automating the process, you’re not only allowing visitors to quickly access the information they need—you’re also reducing the burden of security reviews on your admins.

For example, Secureframe integrates with Zapier so customers can create custom rules and automate Trust Center document requests and notifications seamlessly.

Customers can also send updates to all previously approved users whenever they update a resource, ensuring that customers, vendors, partners, and other stakeholders have the most up-to-date security information about your company.

How to use a Trust Center

While Trust Centers are invaluable for security teams, they can also be a powerful tool for sales and marketing efforts. Here’s how:

• Reduce security review friction: Allow prospects to self-serve by downloading security documents directly from your Trust Center. With customizable workflows in place, security teams can approve or deny document requests efficiently, reducing delays.
• Proactively share with prospects: Sales teams can use a Trust Center to proactively address concerns about security early in the sales cycle. This reduces the need for repetitive security conversations and helps accelerate deals.
• Showcase on your website and social: A well-designed Trust Center can differentiate your organization from competitors. By showcasing your commitment to security in a transparent and visually appealing way on your website as well as other distribution channels like social, you can build credibility with prospects who value security and compliance.