A clinical research organization managing HIPAA compliance and vendor risk across hundreds of vendors had a hard deadline: migrate off their incumbent platform before licenses expired or risk losing years of compliance documentation. The decision was made for them when they discovered their existing tool crashed trying to export its own document repository, turning a routine migration into an operational crisis. With a three-person compliance team already stretched across a concurrent managed service transition and an expanding clinical trial portfolio, they needed a platform that could absorb the migration, not add to it.
[ The Problem ]
A Platform That Couldn't Export Its Own Data
The compliance team had built their entire vendor risk and HIPAA program on a platform that was, by their own testing, architecturally broken for data portability. Exporting five vendors took 90 minutes of manual work. Selecting the full repository crashed the system entirely. With a 5GB+ document archive and a hard license expiry deadline, staying on the incumbent meant accepting data loss as an operational reality.
Beyond the migration crisis, the platform offered no automation for questionnaire workflows, reminders, or ownership tracking. Evidence and policy data was scattered across systems with no central source of truth. The three-person team was absorbing manual work that should have been automated, while simultaneously preparing for an increase in external audits as clinical trials matured into 2026 and a HITRUST certification target on the horizon.
[ What they needed ]
Before the migration deadline forced a decision, the team was trying to:
- Manually export vendor documentation in batches to work around platform crashes
- Track evidence and policy data across disconnected systems without a central source of truth
- Manage questionnaire workflows without automation, reminders, or ownership assignment
- Maintain HIPAA compliance and CFR Part 11 quality processes on a fragmented platform
- Prepare for increasing external audit volume with a three-person team at capacity
- Plan a HITRUST certification path without a structured readiness framework in place
[ Why Drata won ]
Selected over Hyperproof, the incumbent's own data portability failure made the displacement case before the evaluation began.
Incumbent architectural failure removed the status quo as an option: Hyperproof's bulk export crashed on the full document repository and required 90 minutes of manual work per five vendors. With a 5GB+ archive and a hard license expiry, staying was not a viable choice regardless of switching costs.
Hands-on migration support during the proof of concept reduced perceived implementation risk: the solutions engineering team physically loaded Hyperproof data into Drata's import templates, demonstrating a feasible migration path for a three-person team managing multiple concurrent transitions.
Integration coverage matched the existing stack precisely: Azure, Microsoft 365, and Intune were all in scope for automated evidence collection, making the 50 to 70 percent automation target achievable from day one rather than aspirational.
Portfolio-level validation accelerated conviction: the champion had prior hands-on Drata experience from a previous role, meaning technical evaluation confirmed a known platform rather than introducing an unknown one during a compressed 27-day window.
[ How Drata solved it ]
The evaluation team validated that Drata's GRC platform could automate 50 to 70 percent of evidence collection across their existing Azure, Microsoft 365, and Intune stack, the specific target they had set as the threshold for switching. Drata's TPRM module provided questionnaire workflows with ownership tracking and automated reminders, replacing the manual process the team had been running on the incumbent. Custom framework support covered both HIPAA and CFR Part 11, with a risk register supporting custom scoring formulas for the detectability metrics their clinical trial vendor assessments required.
The migration path was the deciding factor in execution. The solutions engineering team physically loaded the organization's Hyperproof data into Drata's import templates during the proof of concept, reducing the burden on a team managing three concurrent system transitions simultaneously. Drata's Trust Center provided a centralized, shareable security posture for incoming vendor diligence requests, replacing the ad hoc process the team had been managing manually. The combination of integration coverage, migration support, and structured HIPAA readiness gave the compliance team a credible path to their 2026 audit and HITRUST targets from day one.
[ Before and after Drata ]
Before Drata, the compliance team's entire vendor documentation archive was effectively trapped in a platform that crashed on bulk export, making any migration operationally impossible without manual intervention at scale.
After, the full Hyperproof archive was migrated with direct implementation support, evidence collection across the Azure and Microsoft 365 stack is automated, and the team has a structured readiness path for HITRUST certification and increasing external audit volume in 2026.
[ Business outcome ]
The organization closed on a 24-month term and began migrating its full compliance program, including hundreds of vendor records, into Drata before the incumbent license expired. The 50 to 70 percent evidence collection automation target was validated during the proof of concept, giving the three-person team a concrete reduction in manual workload ahead of a year when external audit volume was projected to increase significantly.
The migration that would have taken weeks of manual effort under the incumbent's broken export process was completed with direct implementation support, removing the data loss risk that had made the status quo untenable. With HIPAA compliance, vendor risk management, and CFR Part 11 quality processes consolidated on a single platform, the team entered 2026 with a structured path to HITRUST certification and executive-facing dashboards ready for quarterly compliance reporting.