'Inside Security' with Saloni Porwal (Senior Product Manager at Drata)

In previous editions of 'Inside Security', we've explored enterprise resilience and cyber risk quantification as critical components of modern security strategies. Today, we shift our focus to another crucial yet often overlooked dimension: the pivotal role product managers play in shaping effective security solutions, particularly through the strategic implementation of integrations.

As security landscapes grow increasingly complex, organizations rely on numerous specialized tools working in concert. But how do these diverse systems come together cohesively to form a robust security posture? The answer often lies in the hands of security-focused product managers who bridge technical capabilities with business needs.

In this edition of 'Inside Security', Saloni Porwal (Senior Product Manager at Drata) shares her insights on how product management in security transforms fragmented tools into unified solutions through strategic integrations, ultimately reducing human error, automating critical workflows, and building trust with customers.

The Evolving Role of Product Management in Security

Traditional Boundaries: Internal vs. External Focus

Product management has traditionally been categorized as either internally or externally focused, but the reality, especially in security, it is far more nuanced.

"I don't know a PM role that wouldn't entail working with both your engineering teams and external customers. When you're working with external customers, you're building solutions for their pain points. But to deliver those solutions, you must collaborate internally with engineering teams, packaging teams, GTM teams, and sales support."

This dual focus becomes particularly critical in security, where internal workflows directly impact external trust.

"If we create the right structure and environment for our team and provide them with the right necessary tools and workflows, it's going to make external customers even more happy. Our team will have everything they need to build solutions instantly without process breaks."

From Technical Specifications to Trust Building

The security PM's role transcends traditional product development to become a trust enabler. While PMs in other domains might focus primarily on features and user experience, security PMs must constantly balance usability with compliance, risk mitigation, and trust building.

"Working in security, especially when building products like production access systems or identity management solutions, everything has to follow security policies and guidelines. It's about building trust – both internally with your teams and externally with customers."

This trust-building dimension adds complexity to the security PM's role, requiring them to deeply understand regulatory requirements, industry best practices, and emerging threats – all while ensuring solutions remain usable.

"Security is not seen a revenue generator but a cost center. It's hard to change that sentiment, however, what we can do is to leverage security to build a company's trust value, which is always important for any customer."

Why Integrations Matter in Security

The Integration Imperative

Today's security landscape is defined by specialization, with organizations typically employing 10+ different security tools across domains like identity access management, vulnerability scanning, and compliance monitoring.

"Integrations are a basic necessity for every company today, regardless of size. From the smallest company to the largest enterprise, you typically have HR systems, IT systems, and various security vendors. Without integrations, teams resort to manual processes like CSV uploads, introducing significant time investment and potential for human error."

For compliance especially, this fragmentation creates particular challenges:

1. Evidence Collection Burden: Security and compliance teams must gather data from disparate systems to satisfy auditor requirements
2. Visibility Gaps: Without integrated views, critical security signals may remain siloed
3. Response Delays: Manual coordination between systems slows incident response
4. Human Error Risk: Manual data transfer between systems introduces potential mistakes

Through security, you're building trust. If you're doing a lot of work manually, there's definitely a chance of human error, which can impact that trust. This applies whether you're doing access management, production access, or compliance evidence collection.

Automating Trust Through Integration

Strategic integrations transform security from a series of disconnected controls into a cohesive, automated fabric. For compliance-focused organizations, this is particularly valuable:

"If a company is trying to build trust and get SOC 2 certified, they would want to invest in integrations to make their own life easier. Otherwise, they would spend hundreds of hours just collecting information from different sources and tools."

The benefits extend beyond mere efficiency:

"Integrations automate your data collection from vendors, saving time and reducing human error. At the end of the day, security is about building trust, and automating these workflows is key to maintaining that trust."

The Product Manager as Integration Orchestrator

Balancing Stakeholder Needs

PMs within compliance and security industry must navigate complex stakeholder dynamics when implementing integrations, balancing engineering realities with security requirements and business objectives.

"As a PM, you have this unique responsibility to understand and talk to customers, understand their pain points and how they use your app or tool. On the integration side, this means deeply understanding both what data security teams need and how various vendor APIs work."

This positioning gives PMs particular insight into organizational pain points that might otherwise remain invisible to leadership.

The Build vs. Buy Decision

One of the most consequential decisions PMs face is whether to build integrations in-house or leverage specialized integration platforms. This decision involves complex tradeoffs between flexibility, speed, and resource allocation.

"The build versus buy decision typically depends directly on organizational needs, priorities, and OKRs. If an organization has limited resources but ambitious goals to achieve quickly, that naturally leads to considering vendors to help with integrations."

When evaluating integration approaches, PMs must consider:

1. Time to Market: How quickly must new integrations be deployed?
2. Engineering Resources: Are internal teams experts in the target systems?
3. Customization Needs: How specialized are the integration requirements?
4. Cost Analysis: What's the ROI comparison between building and buying?

"When we started building integrations internally, it was taking a lot of time because our internal resources aren't experts on all these different vendors. We had to learn each time how their APIs work and what data they're surfacing. Working with an integration provider who had already standardized this process made it a one-week effort versus five or six weeks of work for a single integration."

Data-Driven Advocacy

Successful PMs rely heavily on data when advocating for integration investments, recognizing that security initiatives, often seen as cost centers, require thorough justification.

"One thing we worked on constantly was getting more and more feedback, collecting data on how many tickets were filed for certain pain points, and showing the impact not just on employee workflows but eventually on customers."

By quantifying the time saved, error reduction, and trust impact of proposed integrations, PMs can transform what might be seen as technical infrastructure into strategic business investments.

"You have to champion internal workflow builds by making a data-driven case. Very few people think about how creating the right structure and environment for teams with necessary integrations will ultimately make external customers happier."

The Future: Where PM and Integrations Are Headed

As security and compliance ecosystems grow more complex, the role of product managers in orchestrating integrations will only increase in importance. Several trends are reshaping this landscape:

1. Domain Expertise Imperative: In PM, one can start as a generalist, but after two or three years, they need to be an expert in a domain to find their dream job – especially in security.
2. Integration Standardization: As the market matures, expectations for out-of-box integrations between security tools continue to rise, putting more pressure on PMs to deliver seamless connections.
3. Compliance Automation: Regulatory requirements are growing more complex, making automated evidence collection through integrations not just a convenience but a necessity.
4. Trust Quantification: As organizations adopt more sophisticated risk quantification approaches, integrations that provide comprehensive data for these models become increasingly valuable.

"Security is not one small thing – it has many corners and many different aspects. As long as you can find your interest, you can grow deeper in that area and form your own brand."

Conclusion

The intersection of product management and security integration represents a critical but often under-appreciated dimension of modern security strategies. By orchestrating effective integrations, security PMs don't merely connect systems – they build trust, reduce human error, and enable their organizations to adapt to evolving threats.

As security landscapes continue to fragment into specialized tools and compliance requirements grow more complex, the ability to seamlessly integrate these components becomes not just a technical challenge but a strategic imperative. PMs who can navigate these dynamics, balancing technical capabilities, business needs, and trust building, will be essential to organizations seeking to maintain robust security postures in an increasingly connected world.

We'd like to thank Saloni for her time and insights. If you'd like to connect with her or learn more about these topics, feel free to reach out via LinkedIn.