Glean
Glean Technologies, Inc. · EFROS US AI Vendor Governance Index entry
Composite governance score
C = mixed posture. Acceptable for non-regulated use; requires meaningful additional controls in regulated workloads.
About this vendor
Enterprise generative search and AI agent platform that indexes the SaaS stack (Drive, SharePoint, Slack, Confluence, Salesforce, etc.) and returns permission-aware AI answers.
- Enterprise tier
- Glean Work AI, Glean Apps (per-user licensing)
- Vendor homepage
- https://www.glean.com
- Trust center
- https://www.glean.com/trust
Twelve-axis governance scoring
Each axis is scored Yes / Partial / No / N/A against public evidence — vendor trust portals, BAAs/DPAs, SOC 2 report cover pages, published methodology documents. N/A applies when the axis is structurally inapplicable (foundation models, for example, defer Section 1557 to the downstream healthcare deployer).
| Axis | Status | EFROS note | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| BAA / DPA available | Yes | BAA available for enterprise customers. Glean supports HIPAA-covered deployments. | Glean Trust |
| Training-data opt-out | Yes | Customer data not used to train Glean's models. Default tenant isolation. | Glean Trust |
| US data residency option | Yes | US data residency option available for enterprise customers (US-only deployment). | Glean Trust |
| SOC 2 Type II report | Yes | SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001:2022, ISO 27017, ISO 27018. | Glean Trust |
| ISO/IEC 42001 attestation | No | No ISO/IEC 42001 attestation as of May 2026. | Glean Trust |
| NIST AI RMF self-attestation | Partial | Public governance documentation aligns with NIST AI RMF functions; no formal self-attestation. | Glean Responsible AI |
| Colorado AI Act readiness | No | No Colorado AI Act-specific public statement. | Public posture review |
| HHS-OCR Section 1557 readiness | N/A | Not positioned for clinical decision support. | Glean positioning review |
| FRB SR 11-7 readiness | N/A | Not positioned as a banking decisioning system. | Glean positioning review |
| ABA Formal Op 512 readiness | N/A | Not legal-vertical positioned. | Glean positioning review |
| Subprocessor list public | Yes | Subprocessor list available to customers via the trust portal. | Glean Trust — Subprocessors |
Trust-center maturity
Mature trust portal with public certificate library, audit reports under NDA, customer-facing documentation. Lacks AI-specific certifications (ISO 42001) and explicit Colorado AI Act statement.
Source: Glean Trust
Deep dive
Overview
Glean is an interesting governance case because it sits between cloud productivity tools and AI agents — permission-aware enterprise search that doesn't store source content but does perform retrieval-augmented generation. The governance stack is strong on the platform fundamentals (BAA, residency, SOC 2 + ISO) but doesn't claim sector-specific readiness because it's not a decisioning system.
Strengths
- BAA + US residency + SOC 2 + ISO 27k stack
- Permission-aware retrieval respects source-system ACLs
- Default tenant isolation, no cross-customer training
- Mature subprocessor transparency
Weaknesses
- No ISO/IEC 42001
- No Colorado AI Act compliance statement
- Sector overlays (Section 1557, SR 11-7, ABA Op 512) not in scope by positioning
Best-fit use case
Mid-market and enterprise organizations needing AI-grade enterprise search across a SaaS stack, with HIPAA BAA or general regulated-data handling requirements.
Avoid when
Use cases that need vendor-side decisioning support — Glean is retrieval and answer-generation, not regulated-decision automation.
Operator's take
Deploy Glean when mid-market and enterprise organizations needing AI-grade enterprise search across a SaaS stack, with HIPAA BAA or general regulated-data handling requirements. The composite score of 69 (grade C) reflects a mixed posture for regulated US workloads. Skip the vendor when use cases that need vendor-side decisioning support — Glean is retrieval and answer-generation, not regulated-decision automation. In every deployment, treat the cells above as a snapshot — the acquisition that gets to production safely is the one that re-verifies the trust-center posture before contract signature and rebuilds the matrix at renewal.
How this scoring is computed
The composite score blends eleven scoreable axes (BAA, training opt-out, US data residency, SOC 2, ISO/IEC 42001, NIST AI RMF, Colorado AI Act, Section 1557, SR 11-7, ABA Op 512, subprocessor transparency) with the trust-center maturity score. Axes marked N/A are excluded from the denominator so vendors are not penalized for sector-inapplicable axes. The vendor's primary sector amplifies the most relevant axes — healthcare vendors weight Section 1557 ×2, legal vendors weight ABA Op 512 ×2, banking vendors weight SR 11-7 ×2 — so the composite reflects what matters in the actual buying context.
Read the full methodology →Disagree with this scoring?
EFROS publishes scoring rationale per cell with a public source. If you have evidence that a specific axis should score differently — a new BAA, a new certification, a documented policy change — submit a formal challenge below. We re-score and publish the result with the next quarterly edition (or as a mid-quarter changelog entry if the change is material).
Disagree with a score?
Every cell in the EFROS Index is source-cited. If you have a public source that contradicts a score for Glean, submit a formal challenge — we re-verify against the source and respond within 14 days.
Other vendors in Productivity AI
Same category, scored on the same twelve axes. Useful for head-to-head shortlisting.
Take the scoring into production
The Index tells you the posture. These engagements turn the posture into a deployable program — vendor selection, governance policy, sector overlay, audit-ready evidence.