# Article Name Why Drata Users Need a SaaS Management Platform to Stay Audit-Ready # Article Summary Drata automates controls yet misses shadow apps; a SaaS management platform ensures vendor inventory and SOC 2 audit readiness # Original HTML URL on Toriihq.com https://www.toriihq.com/articles/drata-saas-management # Details Many compliance teams rely on Drata to automatically gather evidence and keep SOC 2 audits moving forward. The catch is that Drata only validates what’s already in view, so newly adopted or forgotten apps remain outside its radar. Auditors uncover those hidden tools sooner or later, and the cleanup is never simple. Teams scramble to rebuild vendor lists, remap data flows, and explain why access reviews missed half the stack. Every additional finding increases test work, stretches remediation timelines, and pulls staff away from strengthening controls. Linking Drata with a real-time SaaS management platform closes those gaps and keeps inventories aligned. Continuous discovery becomes audit-ready evidence day after day, without the last-minute scramble. ## What compliance blind spots remain after deploying Drata? Drata can’t protect data it doesn’t know about; that gap starts the trouble. The platform collects control evidence every hour, yet it only checks the vendor table you provide, leaving anything off-sheet invisible. Thirty days later, the dashboard still shows green even though dozens of fresh tools, spun up on corporate cards or free trials, sit outside the automation loop. The most common blind spots fall into a few predictable categories: - Shadow IT, when an employee signs up for Figma or Canva with a work email and never tells IT. - Post-onboarding apps, added after a clean Day-1 setup, that never make it back to the master list. - Canceled contracts that linger in single sign-on, quietly holding data in suspended accounts. - Department-specific tools, like a marketing survey platform, renewed on a credit card the finance team never sees. Each item looks small in isolation, yet together they create a material gap between the real environment and what Drata records. Recent industry numbers illustrate just how fast the gap opens. Cisco CloudLock found that a typical midsize company runs 975 separate cloud services, yet the IT team formally approves fewer than 10 percent. Gartner estimates roughly 30 percent of SaaS spending goes to unmanaged apps. If Drata only receives the “known” slice, its exports miss hundreds of data processors, user accounts, and access logs the auditor still expects to see. The mismatch surfaces at the worst possible moment: audit week. The auditor grabs a point-in-time vendor roster, matches it against invoices or SSO logs, and immediately flags tools left off your workspace. A simple SOC 2 walk-through turns into a scramble for retroactive risk assessments, offboarding proof, and emergency policy exceptions. Automation didn’t fail; inventory did, and that blind spot can delay the report, add consultant hours, and shake stakeholder confidence. ## Why does up-to-date SaaS inventory matter for audits? A stale vendor list turns a routine audit into a scramble. Auditors line up your latest roster against control evidence; if Drata shows 68 vendors while finance logs 81 Stripe charges, every gap becomes an interview. Instead of moving on, the auditor waits while your team reverse-engineers who bought what and why. Compliance frameworks such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001 don’t view missing names as simple typos. Each vendor must map to data classification, access rights, security questionnaires, and, for HIPAA, Business Associate Agreements. When the inventory is off, those mappings topple in bulk, and every dependent control falters. When the inventory drifts, the fallout spreads quickly across every team: - Control owners scramble to back-fill evidence, often pasting yesterday’s answers into last month’s forms. - Audit fees climb while the external firm waits. Hourly meters show no mercy. - Release dates slip because engineering leads must join remediation calls instead of shipping code. - Renewal contracts auto-execute, locking the business into another year with an unvetted data processor. As the list drifts, both financial and regulatory exposure increase. A Forrester survey found 43 percent of companies discovered unassessed processors holding personal data only after receiving a GDPR data-subject request. Unknown renewals also hide scope creep; when a marketing platform storing EU profiles adds SMS in California, CCPA suddenly applies without a single meeting. Still, Drata keeps exporting control evidence based on the last sync, leaving you with well-formatted yet incomplete reports. Maintaining a live SaaS inventory removes the entire audit headache. When an automated discovery engine logs every new sign-up in real time, Drata receives a fresh feed before the auditor’s kickoff email lands. That feed delivers clean evidence, trims the audit timeline and cuts down on surprises because the best time to hear about a risky vendor is the moment it joins your stack, not after an auditor flags it. ## How do SMPs complement Drata and close gaps? Unchecked SaaS sprawl outruns any quarterly compliance checklist the security team can produce. Even a well-run Drata program can stumble when sales ops spins up five trial apps over a weekend. A SaaS Management Platform narrows that gap by tracking the paths users leave throughout the stack. Browser extensions ping once someone signs in with Google, SSO logs catch token swaps, and corporate cards flag surprise charges before the receipt shows up. Stitch those signals together and tools like Torii [https://toriihq.com] or BetterCloud [https://bettercloud.com] refresh the vendor list every few hours instead of every quarter. Discovery alone is not the win; the SMP acts on what it sees. - Flags any new domain that touches customer data and sends it to security for review. - Auto-assigns an owner so the auditor knows who will answer vendor risk questions. - Pulls spend, contract date, and data flow details into one record that Drata can import. - Maps every active user to each app, helping access reviews land on the right desk the first time. Once the inventory is solid, connecting with Drata is simple. The SMP sends a clean CSV or hits a native connector, replacing stale rows in Drata’s vendor table without manual edits. When engineering off-boards an employee, the SMP updates the user-to-app matrix within minutes; Drata then logs that change as fresh evidence for access controls. Additional operational perks emerge once the data flows cleanly, and they help tighten the loop. License usage reports trim dead seats, so you retire logins before they turn into orphaned accounts. Renewal alerts surface thirty days early, giving security time to revisit data processing terms instead of rubber-stamping a late contract. The net result is less scrambling during audits and more time spent improving controls rather than hunting down missing apps. ## How can Drata and an SMP stay in sync? Compliance stays on track only when every field has an obvious owner: the SMP discovers, Drata documents, and nothing slips through. Write that rule into a data-governance charter visible to security, IT, and finance so every team knows which platform hosts each data field. When a new app shows up in the browser-extension feed, the SMP flags it as “unreviewed,” pushes the basic vendor card to Drata, and waits for a control-mapping tag before the app leaves staging. That step keeps discovery noise away from auditors and stops teams from sneaking past the review queue. Once ownership is set, you need a steady rhythm for updates. A daily API sync is plenty for most companies, but you still need a human checkpoint. Schedule a bi-weekly stand-up where the SMP admin, GRC lead, and a procurement analyst scroll through the delta report and close gaps while they are still small. One missed payment file or stale SSO connection looks harmless in March yet can snowball into twenty unreachable evidence links by September, so manual eyes matter. Set the ground rules in writing, then automate the rest: - SMP owns vendor metadata, user counts, spend totals, and renewal dates. - Drata owns control IDs, policy links, and auditor evidence folders. - Any app with the “customer data” tag must auto-open a Jira ticket for security review. - Changes in either system trigger a webhook that pings Slack, giving teams a real-time heads-up. - Quarterly, export both inventories to CSV and run a quick diff script; any mismatch older than 30 days becomes a Sev-2 issue. Alerts only work when they carry real and immediate consequences. Configure your SMP to shout when it spots an untagged app with more than five active users, then map that alert ID to a matching Drata sub-task so auditors see a closed loop. Finish the cycle with a half-year reconciliation meeting; five people in a room for one hour often wipes out dozens of lingering exceptions. When roles are this clear, discovery stays fast, evidence stays trusted, and both tools do what they were bought to do. ## Conclusion Automated controls in Drata move you forward, yet they don't seal every compliance crack. Shadow apps slip in, vendor lists age, and surprise renewals pop up, leaving teams hunting for evidence when the auditor requests today’s roster. A SaaS management platform closes those gaps by spotting every tool in real time and pushing a clean inventory back into Drata. Combine Drata’s automation with a live SMP inventory, and compliance shifts from frantic scramble to steady routine. Teams gain breathing room, and auditors receive up-to-date proof. ## Audit your company's SaaS usage today If you're interested in learning more about SaaS Management, let us know. Torii's SaaS Management Platform can help you: - Find hidden apps: Use AI to scan your entire company for unauthorized apps. Happens in real-time and is constantly running in the background. - Cut costs: Save money by removing unused licenses and duplicate tools. - Implement IT automation: Automate your IT tasks to save time and reduce errors - like offboarding and onboarding automation. - Get contract renewal alerts: Ensure you don't miss important contract renewals. Torii is the industry's first all-in-one SaaS Management Platform, providing a single source of truth across Finance, IT, and Security. Learn more by visiting Torii [https://www.toriihq.com].