A mid-sized industrial firm with meaningful exposure to Department of Defense-adjacent work had a compliance problem that was already showing up in customer conversations. Certification questions were arriving, and the honest answer was no. With CMMC Level 2 requirements tightening and ISO 27001 on the roadmap, the IT director needed more than a document repository. She needed a system that could show where the organization stood, guide a relatively new compliance team through an unfamiliar certification process, and do it across two frameworks at once.
[ The Problem ]
Managing 90+ compliance controls in spreadsheets while DoD contracts hang in the balance.
The compliance function was real, but the infrastructure supporting it was not. CMMC and ISO 27001 mapping lived in large spreadsheets, questionnaire responses were handled manually, and some security questionnaires were being submitted without the IT director ever reviewing them. That was not a process inefficiency; it was a control gap with direct revenue consequences.
With 10 to 15 percent of revenue tied to DoD and DOE-adjacent work, the organization could not afford to be caught unprepared when certification requirements hardened. Bid credibility was already being tested. The team had rebuilt its IT infrastructure in the prior year and now needed to layer formal compliance on top, but without visibility into readiness, that work had no clear finish line.
[ What they needed ]
The IT director was trying to accomplish several things at once with limited tooling and no formal compliance function in place:
- Map and track 90+ CMMC Level 2 controls without a dedicated compliance team
- Prepare for ISO 27001 certification in parallel with CMMC readiness work
- Replace manual spreadsheet tracking with a system that showed real-time progress
- Automate questionnaire responses to reduce direct team burden
- Generate auditable historical evidence from existing tools like Microsoft 365, AWS, and GitHub
- Understand what gaps remained before external auditors arrived
- Build a compliance model that could scale without adding headcount
[ Why Drata won ]
Selected over Vanta, which could not match Drata's dual-framework workspace design or the guided execution model delivered through its audit partner ecosystem.
Guided execution over feature parity: the buyer was explicit that she needed something to show where the organization was non-compliant and guide it toward compliance, not just store documentation. Drata's combination of workflow, dashboard visibility, and pre-sale involvement from audit partners answered that requirement directly.
Dual-framework architecture fit the actual problem: CMMC and ISO 27001 running simultaneously, with a separate workspace to isolate government-related evidence from commercial evidence, reflected the real boundary the organization was managing. That structural fit reduced implementation risk before the contract was signed.
Audit ecosystem lowered perceived execution risk: bringing in partners familiar with the platform, pre-assessment design, and downstream remediation reduction gave the buyer a credible blueprint for getting through certification with fewer surprises. That was more decision-relevant than any direct product comparison.
Commercial structure made the business case land: the three-year term brought the annualized cost within range of what the buyer described as comparable to hiring a person, framing the purchase as capability acceleration rather than software spend.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Drata GRC addressed the core problem directly: a single platform that could run CMMC and ISO 27001 simultaneously, using shared artifacts where frameworks overlapped and separate workspaces where government CUI and FCI evidence needed to stay isolated from commercial ISO evidence. That structure reflected the practical boundary the organization was already managing, rather than forcing a single deployment model onto a split compliance environment.
The integration story mattered as much as the framework coverage. Rather than replacing the existing technology stack, Drata was positioned to orchestrate evidence from tools already in use, giving the team a way to produce auditable historical records from systems they already operated. Drata TPRM extended that coverage to third-party risk, closing a gap that manual questionnaire handling had left open.
The deciding factor was not platform features alone. Drata brought in audit partners and compliance advisory resources to walk the team through readiness sequencing, pre-assessment design, and how to reduce remediation items before the formal audit began. For a team that described feeling overwhelmed by the prospect of tackling everything at once, that guided execution model was the difference between a tool purchase and a credible path to certification.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, compliance readiness was invisible and manual, with no system to show progress across either framework and no way to scale questionnaire responses without direct team involvement. After, the organization has a structured audit path underway, real-time control visibility across CMMC and ISO 27001, and an evidence model built on the tools already in use rather than a parallel documentation stack.
[ Business outcome ]
The organization entered a structured CMMC and ISO 27001 readiness program with a defined audit path and ecosystem support in place. Bid credibility on DoD-adjacent contracts is no longer contingent on answering certification questions with a no.
The shift from spreadsheet-based control tracking to a dashboard-driven compliance model means the IT director now has real-time visibility into where the organization stands, rather than discovering gaps when a questionnaire arrives. The three-year commitment was framed internally as labor avoidance and capability acceleration, a more cost-effective path than hiring a dedicated compliance resource to manage the same workload manually. The compliance function now has infrastructure that can scale as requirements tighten, without requiring proportional increases in team size.