24 categories. 76 items. The whole evaluation, instead of the spreadsheet.

The canonical framework buyers check vendors against on the Trooth Network. Every item explains why buyers look for it. 11 items are gated Under NDA, evidence is request-only, never stored by Trooth.

Data Governance & Privacy

5 items

Buyer question

What happens to my data?

Training-data prohibition

Public

Written guarantee that customer data, prompts, and outputs are never used to train or fine-tune the vendor's models.

Data residency & localization

Public

Data stays stored and processed in the jurisdictions the buyer requires (e.g. EU-only for GDPR).

Retention schedules & purging

Public

Configurable retention with automated deletion of logs, transcripts, and temporary data.

Tenant data isolation

Public

Technical guarantees that one customer's data can never leak into another's.

Data portability & exit rights

Public

The right and the mechanism to export everything in standard formats when the contract ends.

Security & Cryptographic Standards

4 items · 1 under NDA

Buyer question

Is my data actually protected?

Encryption architecture

Public

AES-256 at rest and TLS 1.2/1.3 in transit with enforced cipher suites.

Customer-managed keys (CMEK)

Public

The buyer holds the encryption keys, so ultimate data access stays with them.

Vulnerability & threat management

Under NDA

Independent penetration tests, remediation schedules, and a public bug-bounty route.

Endpoint & token security

Public

Secrets vaulted and rotated automatically so credentials never leak into code or logs.

Compliance, Attestations & Regulatory Frameworks

4 items · 2 under NDA

Buyer question

Can they prove it to my auditors?

Security certifications

Under NDA

SOC 2 Type II reports, ISO 27001 certification, and continuous-monitoring evidence.

Regulatory agreements (DPA)

Public

Pre-signed DPAs covering GDPR, CCPA, and industry-specific regulation.

Specialized compliance

Public

BAAs for HIPAA, FINRA/SEC alignment, FedRAMP-class frameworks for public sector.

Vendor risk questionnaires

Under NDA

SIG and CAIQ completed promptly instead of stalling procurement for weeks.

Identity, Access Management & Governance

4 items

Buyer question

Who can touch what, and how is that controlled?

Enterprise SSO on the standard plan

Public

SAML 2.0 / OIDC without forcing a plan upgrade for basic security.

Granular RBAC

Public

Permissions scoped per user, role, data source, team, or agent to shrink blast radius.

Automated user lifecycle (SCIM)

Public

Joiners and leavers provisioned and de-provisioned in real time.

Shadow AI discovery

Public

Dashboards that surface unmanaged or rogue AI tools employees adopted quietly.

Auditability, Observability & Logging

3 items

Buyer question

If something happens, can we reconstruct it?

Comprehensive immutable audit trails

Public

Logins, exports, admin changes, and data access, recorded and tamper-evident.

Log export APIs (SIEM)

Public

Streams into Splunk, Datadog, and the buyer's existing security tooling.

Workflow observability

Public

Full execution traces, inputs, tool calls, latency, failures, not just final outputs.

Infrastructure, Reliability & Performance

3 items · 1 under NDA

Buyer question

Will it stay up when we depend on it?

Uptime SLAs with credits

Public

99.9%+ availability contractually backed by financial service credits.

Performance standards

Public

Latency thresholds and concurrency floors with remedies when degradation occurs.

Disaster recovery & redundancy

Under NDA

Documented failover, geographic redundancy, high-availability architecture.

Integration Depth & Ecosystem Compatibility

3 items

Buyer question

Does it fit the stack we already run?

Native connectors

Public

Working integrations with the buyer's CRM, ERP, databases, and collaboration suite, not just an 'API available' claim.

Orchestration control

Public

Deterministic human-in-the-loop checkpoints and hard guardrails instead of purely autonomous routing.

Extensibility

Public

Documented webhooks, REST APIs, and SDKs for the buyer's own builders.

Model Flexibility & Vendor Stability

3 items

Buyer question

Are we locked in, and will this still exist next year?

Model agnosticism

Public

Underlying models can be swapped; no lock-in to a single foundation provider.

Model deprecation policy

Public

Contractual notice (90+ days) before models, versions, or APIs are retired.

Vendor viability

Public

Financial health, capitalization transparency, and continuity planning.

Intellectual Property & Licensing Rights

2 items

Buyer question

Who owns what we make with it?

IP ownership

Public

The buyer retains ownership of fine-tuned weights, derivatives, and generated content.

IP indemnification

Public

Vendor-backed protection against third-party copyright and patent claims.

Financial Predictability, Support & Onboarding

3 items

Buyer question

What does it really cost, and who helps us?

Transparent pricing

Public

Predictable subscriptions or clear usage metrics with no hidden spike risk.

Layered support & success

Public

CSMs, TAMs, and committed response times for critical outages.

Structured implementation

Public

Guided onboarding and self-service resources built for immediate time-to-value.

AI Safety, Content Guardrails & Red Teaming

4 items · 1 under NDA

Buyer question

Can the AI be hijacked, and what stops bad outputs?

Prompt-injection defenses

Public

Protections that stop malicious inputs from hijacking behavior or extracting context.

Content moderation & output filtering

Public

Real-time filters for toxicity, PII leakage, and severe hallucinations.

Continuous automated red teaming

Under NDA

Ongoing testing against OWASP LLM Top 10 and MITRE ATLAS, not a one-off pentest.

Verifiable grounding

Public

Outputs checked against authorized sources to minimize fabrication.

Agentic Workflows, Tool-Use Controls & Shadow-AI Governance

4 items

Buyer question

What are the agents allowed to do, and who approved it?

Agent discovery & registry

Public

Every autonomous agent tracked with owner, purpose, and environment.

Granular tool-use allowlists

Public

Hard limits on which tools, APIs, and actions an agent may call, with parameter bounds.

Human-in-the-loop authorization

Public

High-stakes operations require explicit human approval before they execute.

Identity preservation & token vaulting

2 items

Buyer question

Will the seats we buy actually get used?

Seat utilization & waste analytics

Public

Dormant-account detection and automated license reclamation against shelf-ware.

Change management & enablement

Public

Rollout playbooks, in-app training, and success touchpoints that drive adoption.

If you have already answered MVSP

A mapping means an MVSP answer gives you a documented starting point for a Standard item. It does not mean the item is satisfied, and Trooth marks nothing as met on the strength of it: every row says what the Standard asks for beyond the MVSP control, and the Standard items no MVSP control reaches are listed at the end rather than left out.

Mapped against MVSP v3.0-20231109. The checklist is published by The MVSP Working Group. MVSP is published by the MVSP Working Group under CC0 1.0. Control numbers and short names below are theirs; the summaries and the mapping are Trooth's, and Trooth is not part of the working group and does not speak for it.

MVSP 1.1External vulnerability reportsBusiness controls

Publish a vulnerability disclosure policy with scope, a safe harbour and a contact route.

Security & Cryptographic Standards - Vulnerability & threat management
The Standard also asks for independent penetration tests, a remediation schedule, and a bug-bounty route.

MVSP 1.4External testingBusiness controls

Have an external vendor penetration test the product at least annually.

Security & Cryptographic Standards - Vulnerability & threat management
The Standard also asks for the remediation schedule and the disclosure route, not only that a test happens.

MVSP 1.6ComplianceBusiness controls

Comply with the industry security standards relevant to the business.

Compliance, Attestations & Regulatory Frameworks - Security certifications
The Standard asks for the report or certificate itself and its continuous-monitoring evidence, not a statement of compliance.

MVSP 1.7Incident handlingBusiness controls

Notify relevant parties of a breach affecting sensitive information within 72 hours of discovery.

Legal Remedies, Breach Notification & Audit Rights - Breach notification timelines
MVSP sets 72 hours from discovery; the Standard asks what the CONTRACT commits to, which is often shorter and is the enforceable one.

MVSP 1.8Data handlingBusiness controls

Sanitise media following NIST SP 800-88 or an equivalent.

Data Governance & Privacy - Retention schedules & purging
The Standard also asks for configurable retention and automated deletion of logs and transcripts while the service is live, not only sanitisation at end of life.

MVSP 2.1Single Sign-OnApplication design controls

Offer single sign-on over a modern standard protocol to every customer at no extra cost.

Identity, Access Management & Governance - Enterprise SSO on the standard plan
MVSP already says at no additional cost, which is the whole of this item; the Standard also asks which protocols and on which plan.

MVSP 2.3Security HeadersApplication design controls

Set the security headers that reduce attack surface and limit post-exploitation.

Security & Cryptographic Standards - Encryption architecture
Headers are one surface. The Standard asks about the encryption architecture itself: algorithms at rest, TLS versions and enforced cipher suites.

MVSP 2.6Dependency PatchingApplication design controls

Keep third-party dependencies current, prioritising security updates of medium severity and above.

Software Bill of Materials & Open-Source Governance - Machine-readable SBOMs
The Standard asks for a machine-readable inventory a buyer can ingest, not only that dependencies are kept current.

MVSP 2.7LoggingApplication design controls

Log authentication, create/read/update/delete, configuration change and staff access to customer data, retained at least 30 days at no extra cost.

Auditability, Observability & Logging - Comprehensive immutable audit trails
The Standard also asks for immutability and tamper evidence, and MVSP's 30-day floor is usually far below what an audit needs.
Auditability, Observability & Logging - Log export APIs (SIEM)
MVSP asks that logs be kept. The Standard asks that the buyer can get them out, into their own SIEM.

MVSP 2.8EncryptionApplication design controls

Encrypt sensitive data in transit between systems using maintained, standard means.

Security & Cryptographic Standards - Encryption architecture
MVSP covers data in transit between systems. The Standard also asks about encryption at rest and the cipher suites enforced.

MVSP 3.1List of dataApplication implementation controls

Keep a list of the sensitive data types the application is expected to process.

Data Governance & Privacy - Training-data prohibition
Knowing which data types are processed is the input. The Standard asks for the written guarantee that they are never used for training.

MVSP 3.2Data flow diagramApplication implementation controls

Keep a current diagram of how sensitive data reaches the systems and where it is stored.

Data Governance & Privacy - Data residency & localization
A data flow diagram shows where data goes. The Standard asks whether the buyer can require it to stay in a named jurisdiction.

MVSP 3.3Vulnerability preventionApplication implementation controls

Train developers and hold guidelines against the named vulnerability classes, including handling untrusted data.

AI Safety, Content Guardrails & Red Teaming - Prompt-injection defenses
MVSP's untrusted-data guidance is the general form. The Standard asks specifically about prompt injection reaching model context and tool calls.

MVSP 3.4Time to fix vulnerabilitiesApplication implementation controls

Ship fixes for application vulnerabilities that materially affect security within 90 days of discovery.

Security & Cryptographic Standards - Vulnerability & threat management
MVSP sets 90 days for material vulnerabilities. The Standard asks for the whole remediation schedule by severity.

MVSP 3.5Build and release processApplication implementation controls

Use version control and a consistent build that produces provenance describing how the artifact was built.

Software Bill of Materials & Open-Source Governance - Machine-readable SBOMs
Build provenance is upstream of the bill of materials. The Standard asks for the inventory itself, in CycloneDX or SPDX.

MVSP 4.2Logical accessOperational controls

Limit sensitive data access to a legitimate need, authorised by the data owner.

Identity, Access Management & Governance - Granular RBAC
MVSP asks that access be limited and authorised. The Standard asks how finely it can be scoped: per user, role, data source, team or agent.
Auditability, Observability & Logging - Comprehensive immutable audit trails
The Standard asks that staff access to customer data be recorded and tamper-evident, not only authorised.

MVSP 4.3Sub-processorsOperational controls

Keep a list of third parties with access to customer data and make it available on request.

Sub-processor & Fourth-Party Risk - Sub-processor transparency
MVSP asks for a list on request. The Standard asks for it published, with notice before it changes.

MVSP 4.4Backup and Disaster recoveryOperational controls

Back up all data securely to a location other than where the application runs.

Operational Resilience & Continuity Metrics - Committed RTO & RPO
A backup in another location is the mechanism. The Standard asks for the committed recovery time and recovery point, which is a contractual number.
Infrastructure, Reliability & Performance - Disaster recovery & redundancy
The Standard also asks for documented failover, geographic redundancy and a high-availability architecture.

What an MVSP answer set does not reach

60 of the Standard’s 76 items have no MVSP control against them, and 7 MVSP controls have nothing in the Standard against them. Answering MVSP is a head start on 16 of them; it is not a substitute for the rest, and Trooth does not treat it as one.

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