What began as a personal frustration with clunky, manual compliance processes quickly turned into a mission to automate and simplify them for others.
Founder and CEO Shrav Mehta built Secureframe to help companies speed up audits, strengthen security, and scale trust – without the usual friction of traditional compliance.
In this interview, he shares the story behind Secureframe’s rapid growth, why automation is key to modern compliance, and how organizations can future-proof themselves in an increasingly regulated world.
How did Secureframe come into existence, and what inspired its founders to address compliance and security automation? What has the company’s growth journey been like since launch?
The story really began with my own experience dealing with clunky security and compliance processes at previous startups. Several years ago, I started asking people in my network if they'd be interested in tools to automate SOC 2 compliance. Many said yes, but I wasn't sure how serious they were – until one person called me back a month later asking where the product was. I quit my job that week and started Secureframe.
We got that first customer through their SOC 2, and they were incredibly happy. By the time we had an MVP, 40+ companies were on our waitlist.
The growth journey to today has been amazing. We now help thousands of companies navigate, maintain, and scale the often time-consuming yet critical work that security and compliance require. It’s deeply rewarding to see how our platform removes friction and unlocks new opportunities for our customers.
Can you walk us through what Secureframe does? What are the core challenges your platform helps businesses overcome?
At Secureframe, we’ve built the leading compliance automation platform that transforms what’s traditionally been a manual, resource-heavy process into an automated, real-time system.
Traditional compliance efforts can take hundreds of hours and cost tens of thousands of dollars. Our platform cuts that burden significantly. In fact, customers report an average 26% reduction in annual compliance costs. Manufacturing Consulting Concepts, for example, saved over 500 hours getting NIST 800-171 and CMMC compliant with Secureframe.
We don’t just help companies meet minimum requirements – we help them strengthen their overall security posture. As Arbor Education shared, “Without Secureframe, you will be spending an awful lot of time doing manual work... Secureframe takes that burden away and allows you to focus your time and effort on areas for improvement.”
Why is it risky for organizations to delay or overlook their compliance and cybersecurity responsibilities, especially in today’s regulatory environment?
Delaying compliance today isn't just risky – it can be fatal to your business. Non-compliance creates a handful of high-stakes risks:
- Fines and penalties – up to 4% of global revenue under GDPR, and steep penalties under HIPAA, CCPA, and others
- Legal exposure – lawsuits from regulators, customers, or partners
- Lost deals – both commercial and government opportunities
- Reputational damage – publicized breaches and compliance failures can erode trust
- Operational disruption – investigations or breaches can halt business processes
- Ineligibility for government contracts – especially under frameworks like CMMC 2.0
Have you observed any evolving security or compliance challenges among your clients due to recent global shifts, such as remote work or increased cloud adoption?
How and where work happens have created entirely new compliance challenges that traditional approaches simply can't address.
Our customers now have to prove compliance across remote teams, personal devices, and decentralized environments, presenting a monitoring burden that’s nearly impossible to manage manually. The shift to cloud-first infrastructure has also introduced new risks and shared responsibility challenges, making visibility and automation essential.
This is where continuous compliance and real-time control testing come into play. It's not just about meeting requirements, it's about staying secure in a world where change is constant.
In your view, what foundational security and compliance measures should every business have in place to remain resilient and trustworthy in today’s digital economy?
Start with continuous compliance monitoring instead of relying on annual audit snapshots. Use risk-informed frameworks aligned to your business: CMMC for defense, SOC 2 for SaaS, HIPAA for healthcare, PCI DSS for payment processors are just a few examples. And make sure you have comprehensive asset discovery. You can’t secure what you don’t know exists.
Most important: weave compliance into how your organization operates. Make it part of your product development process, your vendor assessments, and your employee onboarding, and not just the responsibility of your security team.
As more companies migrate to cloud-based systems and adopt automation tools, what are some critical yet often overlooked compliance or security gaps they should be aware of?
Common gaps we see involve data residency, shared responsibility misunderstandings, and misconfigured automation.
Many teams assume their cloud provider handles everything related to security and compliance. But in reality, cloud providers secure the infrastructure, while customers are responsible for securing their own data, configurations, and access controls.
We often recommend that companies conduct regular compliance gap analyses, especially as they grow or adopt new technologies. It’s not just about knowing your posture. It’s about continuously closing the distance between what’s required and what’s in place.
What best practices should organizations follow to streamline compliance, safeguard sensitive data, and maintain long-term trust with customers and partners?
First, automate wherever you can: evidence collection, control testing, and policy management are just a few high-value areas. Manual processes are not only slow, they’re risky.
Embed security and compliance into your release cycles. This means aligning your DevOps workflows with compliance checks so that new deployments are secure and audit-ready by default.
Transparency is also key. Create easy-to-understand reports for customers, partners, and auditors. And invest in solutions that scale with your business. At Secureframe, we’ve built one of the most configurable compliance platforms available to ensure programs evolve alongside organizational growth.
Looking ahead, what emerging trends or regulatory developments do you think will most impact the compliance and security landscape in the next few years?
AI regulation is moving quickly. The EU AI Act, evolving US AI regulations, and frameworks like NIST AI RMF will require organizations to demonstrate responsible AI governance.
Additionally, supply chain security mandates are expanding beyond CMMC 2.0, and zero trust architecture is moving from best practice to compliance requirement, especially with government initiatives like the US Federal Zero Trust Strategy.
What’s next for Secureframe? Are there upcoming features, partnerships, or markets you’re excited to explore as part of your mission to simplify security and compliance?
We’re focused on three strategic growth areas:
- AI-first compliance: using intelligent automation to simplify the most complex, high-effort tasks.
- Federal market leadership: expanding Secureframe Federal and growing CMMC.com to help thousands of contractors meet critical government standards. We see a massive opportunity to transform how federal compliance is approached.
- Global compliance expansion: supporting international regulations as they emerge, from the EU AI Act to the NIS2 Directive to cross-border data transfer laws.
We’re building the future of security and compliance, and I'm incredibly excited about where we're headed.
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