What is our primary use case?
I am an end user of
Drata. Most of the time I work with
Drata for control mapping, uploading evidence, and sometimes risk management and the Policy Center, such as uploading policies. Those are mainly the features that I work with most of the time.
I primarily do internal audit support with Drata. Drata has been really helpful in terms of centralizing audit evidence. During the traditional audit method, you would have to send evidence via emails. With Drata, everything is centralized, and once external auditors have access to the system, they are able to review everything within a centralized tool. They are also able to download the evidence in a package form and review it. Having to upload policies in one centralized system has been feasible and most effective. Drata has the feature of Policy Center where you are able to upload all the policies within the company and they can be published from there. They can also be acknowledged by employees and approved by policy owners.
What is most valuable?
I think the tool having the ability to centralize most of the things is one of the most good things about Drata because when you do things that are scattered, managing policies from another tool and managing evidence collection during audits from another tool becomes difficult. Drata has Audit Hub where you can actually do the audit and when a control has been audited and prepared, you can mark it as complete within the system. With Drata having those capabilities as a
GRC tool, I think it has most of the capabilities that are needed within
GRC. We do not need to be purchasing other third-party tools. Though they might be needed, it is most useful that most of the work can be performed within the tool without having multiple third parties.
Currently, we have a dashboard in Drata. The dashboards go with admin access and relevant access that you need. With the views that I have, I am able to see all the frameworks that we are compliant with. I am able to see if there are certain controls that are not yet fulfilled. It will show that out of 60 controls, 23 is fulfilled and the rest is not fulfilled. That feature is helpful so that you are able to see that when it is 100%, it means you are compliant.
Overall, Drata as a tool has brought a lot of improvements within the GRC team. Having to centralize everything in one system, mapping the controls within one system, performing audits within one system, monitoring policies within one system, and doing risk management within one system is something that in GRC, speaking from a GRC perspective in cybersecurity, has been very impactful and effective within the team.
What needs improvement?
At the moment, integrating Drata with other AIs would be beneficial. I am not too sure if it is something that can be done or if it is possible, but I am not aware. Integrating it with AI where maybe with regards to evidence collection, I would not have to be collecting the evidence manually would be helpful. When you are managing a lot of frameworks, it is a lot of work to actually individually and manually upload all the evidence in Drata. If maybe there is an AI which can be able to automate that kind of a workflow, and obviously as human beings, we will have to do a human error check, I think it would be amazing. I am not too sure if maybe at the moment it is something that is in place and I am not aware of, but I think it would be great.
Integrations within my team are managed by someone, but I do have an idea about Drata's automated control monitoring. For example, with tests, there are certain systems such as AWS that has been integrated with Drata, and it tests those systems and puts them as part of evidence. For example, data encryption at rest. We can put it a test and integrate it with AWS, and then it will automatically test the encryption in data at rest. If the test has failed, you will see it. When I log in to check all the controls that have failed, it will show on Drata that the test has failed. Then I will be able to coordinate with the relevant stakeholders and tell them that it needs to be fixed.
I would like Drata to make the user interface more intuitive.
For how long have I used the solution?
I joined SUSE in October 2024, and we started using Drata from May of last year.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Drata has been an 8 in terms of stability and reliability for me so far.
There was one instance where our auditors could not access the Audit Hub in Drata, and it was not really something that was wrong from our company side. It was something wrong with Drata. Technical issues do occur. Speaking with them, it took a bit longer than we expected, and we were during the audit process and auditors had to audit, so we had to switch and do it the traditional way without using the tool. However, it was not really that too long.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
Drata is a 9 in terms of scalability.
How are customer service and support?
I do not communicate with the technical support of Drata. I am copied in the emails during the conversations, but I am not the one who is handling the overall support. As part of the GRC team, I am just there for visibility to see what the status of the issues is, but I am not the one who is handling the overall issues.
How would you rate customer service and support?
How was the initial setup?
I was there to do reviews regarding Drata. The setup and the integration of the systems itself was not really done by me, but I was there to review the features and when we do the control mappings and uploading things, I was there to actually see if it was a user-friendly app and if it was understandable.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I know there is SafetyCulture. It is also for compliance and project management, but it is not really the same as Drata. I would say Drata outperforms it.
What other advice do I have?
From my experience with Drata, if maybe for someone who is entry-level or who is not really too technical, they would not really understand some of the things. For someone who is not really technical, some of the terms they would not understand. However, overall, it is understandable and clear and comprehensive.
Drata has official documentation, guides, and manuals. I think it is going to depend on who is doing the integration. If Drata has that feature, it means it is something that is possible. From my experience, there have been some integrations that have been made and they were a success. Sometimes they do fail because of maybe the problem, it might be with Drata or it might be with the third-party tool that it has been integrated with. However, overall, with my experience having gone through some of the controls, the integrations have been a success.
At the moment, the ones that I know that Drata has been integrated with are AWS and Qualys. I do not use any tools from Drata's 75 plus integrations overall.
I would give this review a rating of 10.