A growing software company faced a familiar crossroads: customers were asking for SOC 2, and the internal team had never built a compliance program before. The environment made it harder, a hybrid stack mixing modern cloud services with legacy on-premises systems that no off-the-shelf connector could fully automate. Rather than buy the most bundled option on the market, the team chose a platform they believed would give them operational leverage over time, even if it meant owning more of the implementation work themselves.
[ The Problem ]
Customers Were Asking for SOC 2. The Team Had Never Done This Before.
SOC 2 had moved from a nice-to-have to a customer requirement, which meant the project had real urgency and a real deadline. The team was starting from zero, with no existing compliance program, no audit history, and no structured way to track or communicate control coverage internally.
The environment added friction. A hybrid stack combining AWS, Bitbucket, and Terraform with legacy on-premises systems meant evidence collection could not be solved with a single native integration. The team also needed a way to show leadership that the program was making measurable progress, not just a project in motion with no visible output. Without a credible readiness picture, internal approval for the program itself was at risk.
[ What they needed ]
The team needed to accomplish several things at once, without a compliance background to draw on.
- Stand up a first-time SOC 2 program with no prior audit history
- Automate evidence collection across modern cloud services while handling legacy systems that lacked native connectors
- Define a clear boundary between what could be automated and what required manual evidence workflows
- Generate reporting that made control coverage legible to senior leadership
- Evaluate two fundamentally different compliance operating models under time pressure
- Navigate a procurement process with a hard-to-engage final approver
- Secure a commercial structure that felt low-risk for a first compliance investment
[ Why Drata won ]
Selected over Scytale, the team chose long-term operational efficiency over bundled frameworks and outsourced hand-holding.
Operating model clarity over bundled packaging: Scytale offered more frameworks included at no extra cost and a higher-touch support model. Drata won because the buyer's actual priority was a self-managed compliance program that would become more efficient over time, not one that required ongoing vendor involvement to function.
Honest scoping of a hybrid environment: rather than overselling automation depth, Drata distinguished native integrations, custom API tests, and intentional manual workflows. That transparency gave the technical evaluator confidence that the platform would work in their specific environment, not just in a clean cloud-native one.
Internal reporting that solved a leadership problem: the ability to show a quantified control coverage figure to a hard-to-engage final approver was not a secondary feature. It was the mechanism that made the compliance program approvable internally.
Commercial structure that matched the decision style: a 24-month term, renewal cap, 60-day delayed billing start, and AWS Marketplace as a procurement path each addressed a specific friction point for a buying group that was careful, not enthusiastic. The proposal felt low-risk because it was designed to.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Drata's GRC platform gave the team a structured path to SOC 2 that mapped directly to their environment rather than assuming a clean SaaS-native stack. Native integrations covered AWS, Bitbucket, and Terraform, automating evidence collection and surfacing remediations through compliance-as-code scanning. For on-premises Active Directory and legacy IBM i systems, Drata defined a clear operating model: use custom API tests where the effort was justified, and accept intentional manual evidence uploads where control frequency made full automation uneconomical. That honesty about tradeoffs preserved credibility rather than eroding it.
Drata's audit readiness reporting solved the internal communication problem directly. The team could show leadership a quantified control coverage figure, giving the compliance program a visible, defensible status rather than a vague work-in-progress narrative. TPRM and Trust Center extended the platform's value beyond the immediate audit, addressing vendor risk and inbound security diligence in a single system. The combination gave the team a compliance operating model they could own and scale, not a service they would depend on indefinitely.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, the team had no compliance program, no audit history, and no way to show leadership how much of their environment was actually covered. After, SOC 2 is underway on a platform that distinguishes what is automated from what is manual, and control coverage is a number the team can report upward rather than a project status they have to narrate.
[ Business outcome ]
The team closed their first SOC 2 program on a platform built to grow with them, not just get them through an initial audit. A clear operating model now exists for every control type in the environment, whether natively automated, API-connected, or intentionally manual, so the team knows exactly what they own and what the system handles. Leadership can see control coverage as a number rather than a status update, which changes how compliance is reported and governed internally.
The commercial structure reduced approval risk at every layer: a 24-month term, a renewal cap, and a procurement path through AWS Marketplace gave the final approver a decision that felt bounded and low-risk. With SOC 2 underway and a platform that supports risk management, vendor diligence, and additional frameworks, the team is positioned to expand the program without rebuilding it.