Key takeaways
- Very few AI visibility platforms show their own ISO 27001 certificate. In the sources reviewed, only Conductor and BrightEdge list it. Most others lean on SOC 2 Type II or on a cloud host's certificates.
- SSO, SCIM, audit logs and API access are usually gated to custom Enterprise plans, so they rarely show up on a price list.
- Borrowed certificates and parent-company attestations are the two most common ways a security page overstates what a vendor has.
- Most security details below come from third-party reviews and competitor pages. Verify every row against the vendor's trust center and a current SOC 2 report under NDA.
- Log-based features such as AI crawler analytics mean the vendor ingests your server or CDN logs. Treat that as a data-access question in the review.
Why security reviews trip up AI visibility purchases
AI visibility tools used to be a marketing experiment with a credit card. Now they sit next to your analytics stack, sometimes read your server logs, connect to your CMS, and hold your competitive intelligence. Procurement teams have noticed. If you are buying for a bank, an insurer, a healthcare brand or any company with a vendor-risk process, the security questionnaire is going to arrive before the contract does.
The annoying part is that the category is young. Many vendors are a couple of years old, and security documentation ranges from a full trust center with audit reports to a single line that says "pursuing SOC 2." This guide compares what is publicly reported, tells you how to read the claims, and gives you a checklist for the demo.
One caveat up front. I did not read each vendor's trust center directly. The matrix below draws on Rework's procurement-style review, seoClarity's comparison, and Qvery's roundup. Some entries are dated to August 2026 and a few came from search snippets. Treat it as a starting point for your own diligence, not a substitute.
Note that seoClarity is itself a vendor in this market, so its article is vendor-authored. Its criteria are still useful, especially the section on questions to ask in a demo.
The four terms that get mixed up
ISO 27001 vs SOC 2
ISO 27001 is an international certification of an information security management system (ISMS). A certification body audits you and issues a certificate with a defined scope. SOC 2 is different: it is an attestation report from an auditor. Type I says controls were designed properly at a point in time. Type II says they operated effectively over a period, usually six to twelve months.
This matters because vendors blur the words. Profound, for instance, calls its SOC 2 Type II status "compliant" on some pages and "certification" on others. SOC 2 is not a certification. It is not a dealbreaker, but it is a good reason to ask for the actual report and read the period and the scope.
SSO vs SCIM
SSO handles login. Your identity provider (Okta, Entra ID, Google Workspace) authenticates the user, and the platform trusts it. SCIM handles provisioning: when someone joins, changes teams or leaves, their account is created, updated or removed automatically. You can have SSO without SCIM, and several vendors never state whether they support it. If your offboarding policy requires that access disappears the same day someone leaves, SCIM is the feature that makes that true. Rework tracks it as a separate column for exactly this reason.
Audit logs
A customer audit log records what happened inside your tenant. Not all logs are equal. In AI gateway products the baseline is the authenticated user, the key used, the model, token counts and latency. For a visibility tool, that translates into questions like: does the log cover logins, role changes, data exports, API key use, and edits to prompts or brand settings? That list is my inference from gateway guidance, not something any vendor has published, so ask the vendor to show you a sample export.
Own attestation vs borrowed attestation
A vendor hosting on AWS or Google Cloud inherits some of those providers' certifications for the data center layer. That is not the same as the vendor passing its own audit. Keep this distinction in mind for the whole review.
Vendor security matrix
The table below summarizes what the third-party sources report. "Not stated" means the reviewers did not find it, not that the vendor lacks it.
| Vendor | SSO | SCIM | Customer audit log | Own SOC 2 | Other notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profound | SAML or OIDC (Enterprise) | Yes | Yes (Enterprise) | Type II | HIPAA assessment; "GDPR-Ready" wording |
| Conductor | SAML | Not stated | Not stated | Type II | ISO 27001, ISO 42001, annual pen test, DPA terms |
| BrightEdge | SAML | Not stated | Not stated | SOC 2 listed | ISO 27001, ISO 27701, ISO 42001 on trust page |
| Scrunch | SAML, OIDC (Enterprise) | Not stated | Yes | Type II | GDPR, CCPA; public trust center |
| Goodie | SAML | Yes | Not stated | Type I and II | No DPA found |
| AthenaHQ | SAML, OIDC (Enterprise) | Not stated | Yes | "SOC II", type not stated | Public DPA with EU clauses |
| Peec AI | SAML 2.0 only, set up by Peec | No | Not stated | Not certified per its own page | Hosted on Google Cloud |
| Otterly | SAML via Clerk (Enterprise) | Not stated | Not stated | Cites AWS's certifications | Hosted in Frankfurt |
| Semrush | SAML (Guru and Business plans) | Not stated | Not stated | Enterprise page only | PCI DSS Level 1, pen tests, DPAs |
| Ahrefs | SAML 2.0 (Enterprise) | Via support | Yes (Enterprise) | In progress | |
| HubSpot AEO | Not covered | Not covered | Not covered | Platform SOC 2 Type 2 | AEO product in Beta |
Two things jump out. First, ISO 27001 is rare. Across these sources only Conductor and BrightEdge show it, and Otterly shows only the certifications of its host's data centers. Second, SOC 2 Type II is the realistic baseline, and even that is missing or in progress for a few names.
Platform-by-platform notes
Profound
Profound has the most complete enterprise security story among the pure-play AI visibility tools in these sources: SAML or OIDC, role-based permissions, SCIM (reported 21 August 2026), a customer audit log on Enterprise (reported 7 August 2026), SOC 2 Type II and an independent HIPAA assessment. Its own page claims 2,500+ brands, including a third of the Fortune 100, which is marketing, not an audit finding. Pricing is custom, and the security features sit on the Enterprise plan. Watch the "compliant" versus "certified" wording and ask for the report.
Conductor and BrightEdge
These two are the ISO 27001 holders, which makes sense: they are established enterprise SEO suites that went through procurement long before AI search existed. Conductor is the only vendor in the Rework review with ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 alongside SOC 2 Type II, plus an annual pen test and DPA terms. BrightEdge lists SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 27701 and ISO 42001, along with SAML, password policy and lockout policy. Qvery calls it the longest certification list in its roundup, but also says it did not see Google AI Mode named on BrightEdge's pages, so check platform coverage separately.
Scrunch
Scrunch states SOC 2 Type II, four roles (Admin, Editor, Viewer, Guest), audit logs of user actions and a public trust center. SAML and OIDC are Enterprise-only, with Google sign-in on lower tiers, and per-brand permissions are supported, which is useful for multi-brand groups. One flag: Sitecore announced its acquisition of Scrunch on 3 June 2026. Ask whether SOC 2 scope, sub-processors or the roadmap change after the deal.
Peec AI
Peec AI is popular and well priced, but its enterprise security posture is the least settled of the group. Its docs say SSO is SAML 2.0 only and configured by its team, with no OIDC and no SCIM. Its July 2026 AI Instructions page said "Pursuing SOC 2 (not yet certified)." Profound's competitor page and Qvery say the same. Yet Peec's own comparison page lists "SSO login, GDPR compliance and a SOC 2 Type II report" under a Peec vs Profound heading, and the surrounding text is ambiguous about which vendor each item describes. Those two statements conflict. Get the answer in writing.
AthenaHQ, Goodie, Otterly
AthenaHQ reportedly has SAML and OIDC, audit logs, a public DPA with EU clauses, and a "SOC II" claim without a stated type. Goodie reports Type I and II and SCIM, but reviewers found no DPA. Otterly's security page cites AWS's SOC 1, SOC 2 and ISO 27001, which apply to the data centers, not to Otterly itself. It is a clean example of a borrowed certificate. None of this makes these tools bad. It means the burden of proof sits with you.
Semrush, Ahrefs and HubSpot
The SEO suites bring mature security programs, with a catch. Semrush reports SAML on Guru and Business plans, PCI DSS Level 1, pen tests and DPAs, but the SOC 2 mention is on its Enterprise page only. Ahrefs offers SAML 2.0 and audit logs on Enterprise, with SOC 2 reported as in progress. HubSpot's platform holds SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3, but its AEO tools were in Beta, and the parent's attestation does not automatically cover a Beta product.
Promptwatch
Promptwatch is ISO/IEC 27001 certified and GDPR compliant, with data handled by an EU-based company (Promptwatch B.V., Amsterdam). On access control it has owner, editor and viewer roles with project-level access, scoped project, organization and read-only API keys, and SSO on Enterprise. An organization audit log, on Business, Agency Scale and Enterprise, lists every change and whether it came from the dashboard, the API, an MCP client or Agent Chat, which is the kind of source detail most competitors do not state. Enterprise adds a white-label dashboard and client portal. Tracking also continues while a payment is past due, so data has no gaps.
It is also an optimization platform, not just a tracker: it monitors AI answers, traces citations, writes and publishes content through the Content Agent, and measures AI traffic. For security reviewers, the practical point is that you get the ISO certificate on the vendor itself, not on a host. Confirm the certificate scope and plan gating on the pricing page or in a demo.
Plan gating: where the security features actually live
The pattern across Peec, Scrunch and Profound is consistent: SSO, SAML, audit logs and API access are behind custom Enterprise pricing. Peec's published tiers are Starter at $95 a month, Pro at $245 and Advanced at $495 on monthly billing, with SSO and API on Enterprise only. Scrunch lists Starter at $250 a month annual and Growth at $417 annual, with the API on Enterprise. Profound offers a 7-day trial and custom Enterprise pricing. (Pricing figures are from seoClarity's September 2026 check, so confirm them.)
The consequence: you cannot do a real security comparison from pricing pages. Budget for an Enterprise conversation, and ask which plan each control needs. Rework's advice is to request a configuration doc and the plan it requires. Note also that MCP eligibility is inconsistent in the sources. An April 2026 Peec announcement said all paid plans, while its pricing page lists it under Enterprise.
The log-ingestion question most buyers miss
Some visibility platforms read your server or CDN logs to show which AI crawlers visit your site. That is useful. It also means a vendor receives request data from your infrastructure, which can include IP addresses and URLs. Promptwatch's own AI crawler traffic report shows why the data is worth having: from June 8 to September 6, 2026, only requests whose source IP matched the operator's published ranges were counted, and OpenAI made up 79.8% of verified AI crawler requests in the week of August 31 to September 6, down from 94.8% in June 8 to 14.
If you want that capability, ask what fields the vendor ingests, how long it retains them, whether you can scope the feed to AI user agents only, and which CDN integration (Cloudflare, Vercel, Fastly or raw logs) minimizes what leaves your network.
A scoring approach that works
Rework weights access control (SSO, SCIM, audit log) at 20% and attestations at 20%. That split is sensible. A simple version you can use in a spreadsheet:
| Criterion | What to request | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Attestation | SOC 2 Type II report with period and product scope | Type I only, or "in progress" with no date |
| ISO 27001 | Certificate with scope statement and issuing body | Cites hosting provider's certificate |
| SSO | Configuration doc and the plan required | Set up manually by vendor staff with no SLA |
| SCIM | Supported IdPs and deprovisioning behavior | Not stated |
| Audit log | Sample export, retention period, event types | Admin actions only, no export |
| Data handling | DPA, sub-processor list, region, no training on customer data | No DPA found |
| Vendor change | Post-acquisition roadmap and scope changes | Ownership changed and no updated documents |
Questions for the demo
- Can you share your current SOC 2 report, or other audit documents, under NDA? (seoClarity's suggested question, and the right first one.)
- Does the report cover the product I am buying, or only the parent company or a different product line?
- Is ISO 27001 your own certificate? What is the scope statement?
- Which plan includes SSO, SCIM and audit logs, and what is the price difference?
- Which events does the audit log capture, and can I export or stream it to my SIEM?
- Which sub-processors touch my data, and in which regions?
- Is customer data ever used to train models?
- What changes to scope, sub-processors or support if you are acquired?
Red flags in vendor security pages
- A badge without a report. A "SOC 2 Audit Compliant" badge is not the report.
- Certificates that belong to AWS, Google Cloud or another host.
- Parent-company attestations on a Beta or newly acquired product.
- Contradictory claims across the vendor's own pages, such as one page saying "not yet certified" and another implying a Type II report.
- "Compliant" and "certified" used interchangeably.
- SSO that is configured by the vendor by hand, with no stated timeline.
The baseline criteria from one buyer checklist (written by CustomGPT.ai, a vendor outside this category) are still a good minimum: a current SOC 2 Type 2, SSO through your IdP, encryption in transit and at rest, RBAC, audit logs, and no training on customer data, with alignment to ISO 27001, NIST CSF and NIST AI RMF as a bonus.
Which platform fits which buyer
| Buyer profile | Worth shortlisting | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Needs ISO 27001 from the vendor itself | Promptwatch, Conductor, BrightEdge | Own ISO certification reported or stated |
| Regulated industry with SCIM requirement | Profound, Goodie, Promptwatch (verify SCIM) | SCIM reported for the first two |
| Multi-brand group needing per-brand permissions | Scrunch, Promptwatch | Brand-level or project-level access |
| Existing SEO suite and procurement relationship | Semrush, Ahrefs, Conductor, BrightEdge | Already through vendor review |
| Small team, light security requirements | Peec AI, Otterly | Lower cost, but verify enterprise gaps |
If you want to widen the shortlist beyond these names, the GEO software directory at bestgeosoftware.com lists more options. If you want help designing the evaluation or running the RFP, agencies such as 1001 SEO Media do this kind of vendor selection as part of their AI search work.
Bottom line
Security claims in this category are uneven, and much of the public detail is second-hand. Ask for the SOC 2 Type II report and the ISO certificate scope in the first call, find out which plan unlocks SSO, SCIM and audit logs, and treat any borrowed certificate as a no until proven otherwise. A vendor that answers those questions quickly and in writing is usually the one that will survive your security review.