A publicly traded enterprise software company chose a trust center vendor on price, then spent months absorbing the consequences: broken activity reporting, UI crashes, and an internal access bug that made policy distribution unreliable. With a contract renewal deadline forcing a decision, they moved to replace the incumbent before the February window closed. The requirement was not a better-looking trust center. It was one that could produce defensible activity metrics for CISO and board reporting, and handle both external customers and internal employees without brittle workarounds.
[ The Problem ]
The reporting your CISO needs doesn't exist. The UI just crashed again. And renewal is in six weeks.
The incumbent trust center was tracking only a fraction of user interactions, making it impossible to produce accurate activity reports for CISO and board-level review. Incomplete reporting was not a minor inconvenience — it was an executive risk exposure. Product updates periodically crashed the UI, disrupting customer access to the trust page at unpredictable intervals. A persistent internal access bug meant employees could not reliably reach internal policies without triggering a manual access request workflow. The team needed a replacement live before February, leaving almost no margin for a slow procurement cycle.
[ What they needed ]
The team needed a trust center that could do what the incumbent could not:
- Track and report all document access activity across both internal and external users
- Produce accurate, board-ready reporting rollups the CISO could present with confidence
- Grant internal employees direct policy access without a manual request workflow
- Support granular permissioning to isolate internal and external trust center instances
- Accommodate roughly 300 to 400 external accounts without per-seat pricing pressure
- Complete migration and go live before the February renewal deadline
[ Why Drata won ]
Selected over HyperComply, which had won the prior cycle on price but lost the renewal on every operational dimension that actually mattered.
Reporting accuracy was the deciding capability: HyperComply's incomplete activity tracking had created a direct CISO and board reporting problem. Trust Center's complete activity logging and rollup support resolved the specific failure that triggered the replacement motion.
Permissioning architecture matched the actual use case: the ability to run separate internal and external Trust Center instances with granular access control addressed a bug the incumbent had never fixed, removing a persistent operational burden from the security team.
Unlimited model fit the account scale: with 300 to 400 external accounts, per-seat pricing created exposure. An unlimited usage model removed that concern and made the commercial case straightforward for a buyer already skeptical of new vendor commitments.
Term flexibility unlocked procurement: the buyer had prior regret with a multi-year commitment to the incumbent. Moving to a one-year agreement aligned with Paymentus' approval norms for new vendors and allowed the deal to clear a layered approval chain involving legal, infosec, finance, and CFO sign-off.
[ How Drata solved it ]
Trust Center addressed the core reporting failure directly, providing complete activity tracking across internal and external users and structured rollups the CISO could bring to board-level conversations. The separation of internal and external Trust Center instances resolved the permissioning problem, giving the team granular control over who sees what without forcing employees through an access request workflow each time. An unlimited usage model removed the per-account friction that had complicated the incumbent relationship as the external customer base grew toward 400 accounts. AIQA was identified as a natural next step as the compliance program matures. Migration was scoped at roughly 25 to 30 days with white-glove onboarding, giving the team enough runway to be live before the February cutover.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before the switch, CISO and board reporting was built on incomplete data the team knew could not withstand scrutiny, while internal policy access required a manual workflow every time. After, complete activity tracking supports defensible board-level reporting, and internal employees access policies directly without routing through a request queue.
[ Business outcome ]
The company replaced a vendor that had won on price but failed on every operational dimension that mattered. Board and CISO reporting is now backed by complete, accurate activity data rather than partial tracking that could not survive scrutiny. Internal policy access no longer depends on a manual request workflow, and the trust center can scale to the full external customer base without pricing friction. The migration completed within the February deadline, preserving continuity for external customers and eliminating the operational risk of running an unstable incumbent through another renewal cycle.