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IANS MCP FAQs

Last Updated: 7/13/2026

The IANS MCP (Model Context Protocol)  brings IANS Research intelligence directly into the AI tools your team already uses. This FAQ addresses the questions we hear most often from clients and is designed to help you understand what the MCP is, how it works, and how to get the most out of it. 

Questions not answered here? Contact your IANS Account Manager or reach us at support@iansresearch.com. 

 

What is the IANS MCP?

The IANS MCP plugs the full IANS Research knowledge base — including faculty-vetted research, peer benchmarks, anonymized expert call summaries, and vendor intelligence — directly into your secure company-approved AI environment. It also allows you to book Ask-An-Expert live calls or kick-off Faculty Polls directly from your AI tool, embedded in the thread where you are already working with us via the IANS MCP.

Why did IANS build this? What problem does it solve?

We heard a consistent theme from clients: the IANS platform contains invaluable content, but it is hard to search for and read the volume of resources needed to tackle specific problems throughout the day. The MCP not only surfaces all of IANS content quickly, it does so with advanced semantic search capabilities that surface the most relevant resources quickly. It also allows IANS insights to be applied directly to your existing documentation and materials with robust context, saving you time, getting the hands-on work done, and keeping it all secure.

Which AI tools does the MCP work with?

The initial launch supports Corporate Claude (Anthropic) licenses including Teams and Enterprise plans which are fully secure and create no risk of model training on IANS content. Personal plans, including free plans, do not meet our security requirements.

In the second half of 2026, we plan to add support for Microsoft CoPilot, along with a direct IANS MCP connection option, outside of public LLMS, for organizations that want to integrate IANS content directly into their own InfoSec systems, ticketing platforms, or internal AI tools. Integrations into other public LLMs and popular workflow tools such as Slack and Teams are under review.

When will the MCP be available? How do I get access?

The MCP launched in May 2026 as a Proof-of-Concept and released as a production-grade product offering in July 2026. It is available as an add-on product. If you’re interested in access, please speak to your account manager.

Is the new IANS MCP included in my existing IANS subscription?

There is an incremental cost to use the IANS MCP with your existing IANS subscription. Your Account Manager can walk you through pricing.

Can multiple people at my organization use it?

Yes. The IANS MCP is designed for team-wide deployment. Users will be assigned an IANS credential, need to self-register on our platform, and have their own Enterprise Claude account.

Can IANS see what I’m asking? Is my organization’s data safe?

Your queries stay within your own AI environment and are governed by your organization's existing AI agreement. IANS does not receive or store the questions you ask your AI assistant. IANS receives and logs the search query your AI tool rewrites and sends to the IANS MCP. It is guided to extract the relevant information security topic, or vendor, relevant context and use keywords aligned to the IANS taxonomy. It's guided to identify the relevant security topic or vendor, pull out useful context, and phrase the request using IANS's taxonomy of keywords. Irrelevant context, your files, or other non-IANS connector data is not shared back to IANS. All requests are encrypted in transit via the MCP directly to IANS’ secure infrastructure.

Separately, IANS may use aggregated, de-identified usage data — which does not include firm or user identity — to evaluate and improve how well the service retrieves relevant content. This is distinct from, and does not change, our commitment not to train AI models on client data.

What we log, and how long we keep it:

  • The IANS MCP tool invoked (there are tools for searches based on recency, author, etc)
  • Search text and parameters the connecting AI application constructs, as guided by our tool descriptions
  • Metadata about the documents returned — identifiers, titles, and links, but never the document content itself
  • A session identifier
  • The authenticated user’s IANS identifier string
  • Timestamps
  • Error details

For security purposes, we also log network metadata such as IP address and user agent. This data is used to operate the service, diagnose errors, and protect the platform, including detecting abuse, scraping, and other threats. We retain client Personal Information and other client data — including Data Services log data — until the client or an authorized individual submits a verified request for its deletion.

Are analytics available to show MCP adoption and usage across the enterprise — number of users, frequency, and engagement levels?

Yes, at a summary level. We can provide a summary of who on your team is using the MCP, how frequently they access IANS content through it, and which documents we've delivered to each user. We do not have visibility into users' specific prompts.

Where can I find IANS' Privacy Policy?

You can view our Privacy Policy here.

We don’t yet have a governance policy for MCP use internally. Is that a blocker?

It does not need to be a blocker, but having a governance policy in place before broad rollout is strongly recommended. This is one of the most common topics we discuss with clients right now. Below is some content to get you started:

What kinds of tasks can the MCP help me accomplish?

Clients are putting it to work across a wide range of use cases. The most common include:

  • Security policy drafting and review — point your AI at your existing policy and ask it to incorporate current IANS guidance, tailoring to your organization’s needs based on your risk profile, amount of resources and size of security team and employee base
  • Vendor evaluation and third-party risk — generate evaluation frameworks, scoring templates, and negotiation talking points grounded in IANS data; compare vendors based on IANS unbiased Faculty evaluations tailored to your environment
  • Executive and board reporting — produce briefings and slide-ready summaries that blend IANS intelligence with your organization’s context; e.g., find recent industry specific threats to help build relevant business cases for your executive team and board
  • Regulatory and compliance analysis — map emerging requirements against peer benchmarks from the IANS research library and make them specific to the countries or states that are relevant to you
  • Ongoing intelligence monitoring — build agentic workflows that check IANS content published daily for relevant developments and surface them automatically, but more importantly suggest IANS Faculty recommended actions/next steps tailored to your company
Can I combine IANS intelligence with my own internal documents?

Yes, and this is one of the most powerful use patterns. You can provide your own internal policies, vendor contracts, or risk frameworks alongside IANS content and ask the AI to synthesize, gap-analyze, or update them. Your internal data stays in your AI environment — the MCP simply ensures the IANS layer is added.

What IANS content can I access through the MCP?

Over 90% of IANS content is ingested, and we are working on ingesting the remaining 10%. Excluded content includes:

  • PDF documents
  • CISO Budget & Comp (excepts are available in the MCP)
  • Recorded Event Transcripts
  • CISO Inquiry
  • Security Academy
  • Upcoming IANS Webinars & Events
What does setup look like? Is IT involvement required?

For Claude, the process is lightweight:

  • Your organization’s Claude administrator adds the IANS MCP within the organization settings to make it available for enterprise users
  • Each user “connects” to the IANS MCP via Claude’s Connectors
  • Each user is prompted to authenticate with their IANS credentials
Who do I contact if something doesn't work or I have feedback?

For technical issues, contact IANS support at support@iansresearch.com. For feedback on the product, feature requests, or to share how your team is using the MCP, reach out to your Account Manager. Client input is directly shaping the product roadmap — we actively review and incorporate what we hear.