Drata - Experts & Thought Leaders

Drata, the pioneering Trust Management platform, announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire SafeBase, the pioneering Trust Centre solution for the enterprise. The acquisition is intended to integrate both companies’ shared vision of being the go-to “trust layer” between companies—driving seamless, transparent relationships with the most comprehensive Trust Management Platform. The acquisition is expected to close later this month. Cloud and AI dependency Maintaining client trust via serial compliance requires a scalable and adaptable approach The surge in market demand for a full stack Trust Management platform is fuelled by a perfect storm of increasing Cloud and AI dependency, stricter regulatory requirements like DORA, ISO 42001, and the EU AI Act, high profile breaches, and rising security risks. Maintaining customer trust through continuous compliance requires a scalable and adaptable approach to effectively address these challenges. Drata’s acquisition of SafeBase Drata’s acquisition of SafeBase is expected to significantly enhance its ability to streamline security reviews and strengthen vendor risk management, all through AI-driven automation. Together, Drata and SafeBase will create a seamless ecosystem of trust, governance, risk, and compliance (GRC).  Since SafeBase's founding in 2020 by CEO Al Yang and CTO Adar Arnon, over 1,000 organisations like OpenAI, Twilio, Crowdstrike, Hubspot, LinkedIn, T-Mobile, and one-third of the Cloud 100 have used its Trust Centres to drive approximately $15 billion in security-enabled revenue.  Inbound security questionnaires Drata’s meteoric growth in the past four years has also empowered thousands of organisations With SafeBase, organisations can build trust through transparency and reduce time spent on inbound security questionnaires by up to 98%. Drata’s meteoric growth in the past four years has also empowered thousands of organisations to radically transform compliance automation, vendor risk management, and modern GRC. Innovations in automation and AI “As a pioneer of the Trust Centre category, SafeBase has always been committed to addressing and solving our customers’ needs through unmatched innovations in automation and AI,” said Al Yang, Co-Founder and CEO of SafeBase. “Joining Drata marks another milestone in that commitment, where two customer-obsessed companies with aligned missions and cultures work together to redefine what’s possible in Trust Management. This union cements our position as the pioneering solution for the enterprise.” Compliance and vendor risk management “Trust is now a competitive advantage that rests on a combination of speed and tangible proof, so there’s never been a more important time for organizations to prioritise compliance and vendor risk management, while eliminating the pain points within their GRC program,” said Adam Markowitz, Drata Co-Founder and CEO. “Together with SafeBase, we are empowering customers to continuously ensure and proactively communicate security, compliance and trust—with unrivalled market advantage.”

Drata, the continuous security and compliance automation platform, debuted the first look of a new capability to streamline and expedite security questionnaires at the company’s annual user conference, Drataverse. Drata AI Questionnaire Automation was showcased live to over 600 governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), IT, and cybersecurity professionals. AI Questionnaire Automation During sales cycles, organisations of all sizes often spend countless hours manually crafting replies to hundreds of questions to demonstrate a strong security posture, a process that demands extensive collaboration across multiple teams. The introduction of AI Questionnaire Automation significantly minimises this labour-intensive process by parsing and extracting questions, generating responses using existing data within the Drata platform, and allowing users to review, edit, and approve the AI-generated answers. As a result, organisations can expedite sales cycles and drive revenue growth by minimising delays in the security review process, while also scaling efficiently without sacrificing the quality of responses. Key features Automated Questionnaire Processing: Simply upload security questionnaires in formats like .xls, .csv, .pdf, and more, while Drata AI parses the document and extracts the questions automatically. AI-Driven Answer Generation: Using a rich knowledge base comprising information from the organisation’s Drata instance, the AI generates suggested responses to the extracted questions. Reducing sales friction “AI Questionnaire Automation empowers our customers to build trust quickly and efficiently,” said Brian Elmi, Drata's Senior Vice President of Product Management. “With this new capability, businesses can respond to security questionnaires in minutes instead of days, reducing friction in the sales process and allowing teams to focus on their core operations.” Compliance as Code The company will introduce new releases and enhancements to its risk management capabilities Drata also announced Compliance as Code is rolling out to customers starting today, enabling even more GRC teams to identify and remediate compliance gaps during code development. The company will also introduce new releases and enhancements to its risk management capabilities, including residual risk scoring, vendor intake with AI summary, risk owner notification, and Workspace support, as well as the ability to manage multiple Risk Registers in Workspaces. Drataverse 2024 Drataverse 2024, held at Pier 27 in San Francisco, was designed to bring industry pioneers together to collaborate and shape the future of GRC. This year’s “Chart Your Course” theme featured keynote presentations as well as 20 panel discussions and interactive sessions from A-LIGN, Eden Data, MJD Advisors, ASAPP, and Class Technologies among others, fostering discussions on navigating the complex GRC landscape. 

Drata, the pioneering compliance automation platform, announced that it has acquired oak9, a cloud-native security platform, and released a new capability in beta to seamlessly bring continuous compliance into the software development lifecycle. The acquisition positions Drata as the only platform of its kind that monitors compliance both before and after code is deployed to production. This capability, called Compliance as Code, will be demonstrated at RSA, May 6-9 in San Francisco. Cloud-native applications Acquiring oak9 and launching Compliance as Code in Drata now equips thousands of DevSecOps, GRC, and engineering teams with the power to identify and remediate potential compliance violations as code is developed, instead of after it’s deployed. GRC teams are routinely challenged to address compliance issues after changes are already in production, creating a backlog of issues to address after deployment. GRC teams are routinely challenged to address compliance issues after changes are already in show As DevOps teams grow bigger and more complex, the need to “shift left”, to address these compliance gaps earlier in the SDLC, has significantly increased in order to maintain compliance standards without sacrificing the speed of development. Oak9 specialises in infrastructure-as-code to build security and compliance into cloud-native applications as they are developed, and offered a catalogue of out-of-the-box blueprints that ensured that customers can meet their security and compliance objectives for any architecture on any cloud provider. Future of compliance automation “It’s time to break down infrastructure and application silos and transform compliance and security into one cohesive concept. This is the future of compliance automation and GRC and it’s here now,” said Adam Markowitz, Drata Co-Founder and CEO. “Drata Compliance as Code empowers developers, engineers, and GRC teams to save countless hours by shifting compliance left in the SDLC, collectively improving security and code quality while fostering a culture of compliance.” Key details for the GRC team  GRC teams will have shared visibility into their cloud infrastructure and be able to identify Integrating oak9's software brings Drata into crucial areas of the SDLC where changes happen, including the code repository, and the continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment (CI/CD) pipeline. Pre-built tests map to an organisation’s compliance requirements by scanning their infrastructure code and flag gaps and anomalies with key details for the GRC team to resolve.  Now, GRC teams will have shared visibility into their cloud infrastructure and be able to identify failing controls within the code before it ever makes it into production, creating more efficiency and confidence leading up to an audit. Integrated into Drata’s platform   “Oak9’s mission from day one has been to address critical security gaps throughout the software development lifecycle, including gaps with compliance, which is all too often viewed as an afterthought. That mindset can be costly for the entire organisation,” said Om Vyas, Co-Founder and CEO of oak9. “Being integrated into Drata’s platform is exceptional validation of our team’s commitment to realising this mission. This sets a new standard in how teams tackle cloud-native security and compliance.”