A growing technology company with a globally distributed, infrastructure-heavy environment needed to stand up ISO 27001 and SOC 2 fast. Their compliance program lived in spreadsheets and ad hoc tooling, and the team knew that approach would not survive an audit. With a hard timeline and no room for a slow evaluation, they needed a platform that could replace manual processes across frameworks, policies, risks, vendors, and evidence collection. They chose Drata.
[ The Problem ]
Building a Compliance Program by Hand Is Not a Strategy
The team was managing risk assessments, supplier records, and organizational changes across disconnected spreadsheets and internal tools. Every update required manual coordination. Every audit cycle meant rebuilding context from scratch.
The deeper problem was not just inefficiency. The company needed ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certification to support its growth trajectory, and the existing approach could not produce a defensible, repeatable compliance program. Staying on spreadsheets meant staying unauditable. The cost of inaction was not abstract: without certification, the path to enterprise customers and regulated markets stayed closed.
[ What they needed ]
Before selecting Drata, the team was trying to:
- Stand up ISO 27001 and SOC 2 simultaneously without a dedicated compliance platform
- Track risk assessments, vendor records, and personnel compliance manually across spreadsheets
- Manage policy creation and acknowledgement through ad hoc internal tooling
- Coordinate evidence collection without automated integrations into their existing stack
- Evaluate multiple compliance platforms against a nonstandard, bare-metal-heavy infrastructure
- Build a compliance program that would satisfy auditors and improve real security operations, not just produce a certificate
[ Why Drata won ]
Speed to dual-framework certification was the deciding factor, and Drata was the only option that made it operationally credible from day one.
Core compliance fit was immediate, not theoretical: Drata's framework management, shared controls across ISO 27001 and SOC 2, policy templates, and risk workflows mapped directly to the team's stated need. The buyer connected the platform to reduced manual effort within the first demonstration.
The evaluation team built trust under pressure: the proof of concept involved access instability, integration questions against nonstandard infrastructure, and a multi-step internal approval process. Staying responsive throughout that cycle gave the internal champion the support needed to carry the recommendation through management and compliance review.
Commercial packaging removed commitment risk: the buyer was price-sensitive and uncertain about long-term fit. Offering a right-sized package with term flexibility reduced the perceived downside of committing before every edge-case question was resolved.
Existing integrations reduced implementation friction: Google Workspace, Jira, GitHub, and Slack were already in use. Drata's native connections to that stack meant the team could begin compliance work without building custom pipelines or maintaining a separate source of truth.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Drata GRC replaced the spreadsheet-driven compliance workflow with a structured system for framework management, policy templates, risk registers, and vendor tracking. The team could pursue ISO 27001 and SOC 2 in parallel using shared controls, cutting the duplication that comes with running two frameworks independently.
Drata TPRM addressed the vendor management burden that had previously required manual tracking, giving the team a repeatable process for third-party risk without building one from scratch. Trust Center gave the company a way to handle inbound security diligence requests without pulling the security team into repetitive manual responses.
During the proof of concept, Drata's integrations with Google Workspace, Jira, GitHub, and Slack mapped directly to the team's existing tooling, reducing the implementation lift. The evaluation team stayed responsive throughout a technically demanding trial period, helping the internal champion build a recommendation that could survive management and compliance review.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, the compliance program existed only in spreadsheets, with no structured path to certification and no scalable way to manage risk, vendors, or policy acknowledgements. After, ISO 27001 and SOC 2 are active, parallel workstreams with automated evidence collection and a repeatable operating rhythm the team can sustain beyond the initial audit.
[ Business outcome ]
The company entered the engagement with no compliance platform and a hard deadline. They closed with a structured path to ISO 27001 and SOC 2 certification, a risk register in motion, and vendor and personnel workflows no longer dependent on manual coordination.
The internal champion was able to present a defensible recommendation to leadership because the platform addressed the core compliance workload credibly and the commercial package was right-sized for the company's current stage. Certification is now a scheduled deliverable, not an aspiration. With both frameworks underway, the company is positioned to open enterprise and regulated-market conversations that were previously blocked by the absence of a compliance program.