Eden Data, Drata, and AssuranceLab Help Humanforce Accelerate Compliance and Enable Global Growth Using AWS

Humanforce is a global company that provides human capital management solutions to more than 2,300 organizations and over 600,000 users worldwide. The Humanforce platform offers a highly configurable, best-in-one workforce management (WFM), HR, Payroll and Wellbeing solution that is employee-centered, intelligent, and compliant.

Humanforce has experienced substantial growth, marked by its acquisition of new enterprises and the organic expansion of its workforce and IT infrastructure. This growth has brought increased complexity in security requirements and the necessity to adhere to standards and regulations such as SOC 2 and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a European data protection law. Humanforce needed to build a strong security and compliance posture integrating AWS services such as Amazon GuardDuty and AWS CloudTrail, while mapping controls across frameworks to streamline the entire compliance process. To address this need, Humanforce implemented Drata’s compliance automation platform, which easily integrated with Humanforce’s AWS infrastructure to manage security controls, track policy adherence, and generate the necessary evidence documentation to validate the company’s compliance posture.

While Humanforce already had an experienced Information Security Manager, Swapnil Jain, leading security efforts, the organization faced a challenge with an understaffed security team requiring assistance in the management of the organization’s compliance program. This challenge emerged alongside the need to address incident response processes and build a comprehensive cybersecurity program. Additionally, the company had a tight deadline to achieve ISO 27001 compliance, an international standard for information security management, by the conclusion of 2023. Recognizing the urgency and the broader scope of its requirements, Humanforce realized it required expert guidance to oversee the compliance program.

To streamline its compliance program, Humanforce partnered with Eden Data, a cybersecurity firm and an AWS Partner that specializes in security and compliance services to startups and global organizations. Eden Data facilitated the collaboration between Drata and AssuranceLab to establish a scalable compliance program for Humanforce. Eden Data and Drata are partners of the AWS Global Security & Compliance Acceleration (GSCA) Program, joining forces to assist customers with SOC 2 readiness and SOC 2 audits. “Our companies already shared a close working relationship, which made it easy for us to cohesively work together to accomplish the mission,” says Taylor Hersom, founder and chief executive officer of Eden Data. “In addition to our cybersecurity and compliance expertise, Drata offers world-class software to efficiently organize data, and AssuranceLab is the third-party auditor that specializes in validating the solutions we build.”

Eden Data began the project by building security controls using Amazon GuardDuty, AWS CloudTrail, and AWS Config. Eden Data then worked with AssuranceLab to complete a SOC 2 audit for intelliHR, a company recently acquired by Humanforce. Furthermore, Eden Data provided support to Humanforce in the development of an ISO 27001 program within the Drata platform and worked with AssuranceLab as the external auditor.

Eden Data also played a pivotal role in helping Humanforce migrate the intelliHR environment to Amazon Web Services (AWS) and then worked with AssuranceLab to ensure that Humanforce’s security controls were robust and met ISO 27001 requirements. “Our three companies, along with Humanforce, created a cohesive, well-organized solution,” Hersom says. “Eden Data specifically augments the Humanforce security team, and we’re able to quickly bring people in to scale the project with the appropriate level of resources to meet requirements.”

By establishing a comprehensive compliance strategy, including building complete controls and documentation with automated evidence collection, Eden Data, Drata, and AssuranceLab assisted Humanforce in streamlining compliance processes and completing an ISO 27001 audit ahead of schedule. “We helped Humanforce beat the expected deadline for ISO 27001 compliance, which is important because its customers require this certification for protecting their sensitive data,” Hersom says. “We streamlined things by building a singular organized compliance program on AWS, providing project management to keep things on track, and creating a lot of operational efficiencies that help Humanforce reduce risk.”

The new Humanforce compliance program was designed to be scalable to encompass future acquisitions and other strategic initiatives. “With this solution, Humanforce can also stay ahead of expansions and any new regulations and standards while having a more robust security strategy for the future,” says Hersom.

Humanforce is earning more customer trust with its customers by achieving ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 compliance, demonstrating a commitment to protecting sensitive data and showcasing the company’s investment in security. As a result, Humanforce will be able to accelerate its global business growth. “Humanforce can more easily build trust with customers and prospects, and the additional investment in security reinforces the company’s commitment to addressing the needs of enterprise-sized organizations with confidence. Achieving ISO 27001 compliance and certification allows Humanforce to provide customers with information security assurance and should shorten a typical sales cycle,” says Hersom. “Ultimately, because ISO 27001 is recognized internationally, this will help Humanforce expand further internationally.”  

Eden Data is continuing its work with Humanforce, setting up additional monitoring mechanisms as the company adds new AWS environments. “We will keep expanding our threat intelligence and monitoring capabilities so we can continue helping Humanforce become an even more mature organization in terms of security,” Hersom says. Eden Data also plans to keep collaborating with Drata and AssuranceLab. “Our visions all align, and all three of us are obsessed with bringing better security and compliance to startups,” Hersom says. “This gives our customers a better experience.”

Additionally, Eden Data plans to grow its partnership with AWS through the AWS GSCA Program SOC 2 Accelerator for Startups bundle. AWS GSCA Bundles streamline compliance implementation by providing a collection of expert-vetted security and compliance partners to provide a complete compliance solution from migration to SOC 2 attestation. This covers the spectrum of evidence collection and reporting tools, advisory services, auditors, and hands-on engineering firms that all work well together to ensure you have everything you need to accelerate your compliance journey. “We’re working with AWS to help startups achieve SOC 2 compliance as quickly and efficiently as possible,” says Hersom. “The reach of AWS is immense, and I don’t think we could reach so many customers with any other company.”