I am currently evaluating Drata for our SOC 2 Type II readiness program. Our organization employs a significant number of short-term contractors and external auditors who require limited, temporary access to evidence and policy documentation within the platform.
My primary concern is cost efficiency tied to user management. Drata's pricing model, as I understand it, is per-seat. Provisioning full user accounts with individual licenses for every contractor who needs to review a handful of controls or artifacts seems financially untenable and operationally heavy.
I am seeking proven strategies to accommodate these users without incurring the cost of full seats. My initial thoughts revolve around the following, but I require clarification on the security and compliance implications:
* Using a single, shared "Contractor" or "Auditor" user account for external parties, with credentials managed and rotated by our internal team.
* Exporting specific control evidence sets (PDFs, screenshots) and sharing them through a separate, secure portal outside of Drata.
* Leveraging "Read-only" or custom roles if they exist, but I suspect these still consume a full seat license.
Key considerations for my use case are:
* Maintaining a clear audit trail that definitively links evidence access to an individual person, not a shared account.
* Ensuring data residency and encryption standards are upheld for exported evidence.
* Adhering to the principle of least privilege within the Drata environment itself.
Has anyone architecturally solved this problem in a way that satisfies both the compliance requirements (like SOC 2's access logic and audit trails) and the budgetary constraints? I am particularly interested in any official Drata features or supported workflows that address temporary, limited access.
Security is a feature, not an afterthought.