Scale Your Policy Management with Configurable Approvals

Your organization has grown, but your policy approval process hasn't kept pace. Until now.

We're excited to announce Configurable Policy Approval Workflows: a powerful new feature that transforms how your team manages policy approvals, moving you from a single-owner bottleneck to a sophisticated, scalable approval system.

Manual Approvals, Fragmented Workflows

Policy approvals aren’t binary or simple. Our customers shared some key challenges with not having multiple approvers: 

• Bottlenecks: Policy owners become approval gatekeepers, slowing critical decisions.

• Single points of failure: When the owner is unavailable, everything stops.

• Lack of expertise: Complex policies often require input from multiple departments.

• Risk management: High-stakes decisions need multiple sets of eyes.

Static approval flows don’t reflect the real-world complexity of policy governance. 

Introducing Configurable Policy Approval Workflows

Our new policy approval system lets you design sophisticated workflows that match your organizational structure and risk tolerance. Here's what's now possible:

Flexible Tier Structure

Configure up to six approval tiers, each serving different roles in your approval process. Whether you need a simple two-step approval or a complex six-stage review, you have the flexibility to design workflows that fit your needs.

Distributed Authority

Add multiple approvers per tier, with a distinct consensus rule for each tier. This distributed approach means:

• Faster approvals through parallel processing.

• Better coverage during vacations and busy periods.

• Improved decision quality through diverse perspectives.

Real-world applications:

• Tier 1: Department heads for initial review

• Tier 2: Compliance team for regulatory checks

• Tier 3: Legal review for contract implications

• Tier 4: Finance approval for budget impact

• Tier 5: Executive sign-off for strategic alignment

• Tier 6: Board approval for high-risk policies

How Configurable Approvals Helps You

Policy approval isn’t just a checkbox—it’s a coordination challenge that spans roles, tools, and time zones. Drata’s Configurable Approvals meet you where you are, no matter your title or team.

Director of Compliance

The Accountability Anchor—Finally Unburdened You're the single point of accountability—and the one stuck chasing sign-offs. With Configurable Approvals, you can:

• Build structured, tiered approval flows Create up to six tiers, each with its own approvers, deadlines, and logic (single sign-off or full consensus). Ex: Tier 1 (Legal) → Tier 2 (Leadership)

• Respond flexibly to real-world changes Approvers can pause with change requests, while owners and admins can override if needed. Every action is logged in the Version History. Ex: Requested changes pause the flow → Owner overrides → Logged in Version History

Eliminate manual tracking, enforce accountability, and move approvals forward without the chaos.

Security Engineer or GRC Manager

The Builder of Processes—Without the Bottlenecks You're the fixer and systems thinker, but handoffs and follow-ups bog you down. With Configurable Approvals, you can:

• Automate handoffs between teams Each tier triggers the next automatically once completed—no manual nudges needed. Ex: Tier 1 (Engineering) completes → Tier 2 (Legal) notified automatically

• Customize rules to match policy risk Set “all” or “any” logic per tier to balance speed and control based on sensitivity. Ex: Tier 1 (Engineering) = All must approve → Tier 2 (Legal) = Any one reviewer

Speed up the process for routine reviews while preserving rigor for critical ones.

VP of Security / Head of GRC

The Strategic Scaler—With Visibility at Every Step You're leading across frameworks, regions, and teams. You need scalable processes, not spreadsheets. With Configurable Approvals, you can:

• Standardize and scale policy workflows Assign multiple approvers per policy and establish your different groups and tiers

Ex: New version created → Approval structure applied

• Stay informed without micromanaging Email and task alerts notify each tier’s reviewers when it’s their turn. Ex: Tier activates → Email sent to all designated approvers

Scale confidently, knowing every step is consistent, auditable, and hands-off for leadership.

Key Benefits

A tiered approval system brings speed and structure to policy management. Parallel processing reduces approval times without losing oversight, while multi-level reviews strengthen governance and risk management. As your team grows, scalable and flexible workflows adapt to varying policy types—eliminating one-size-fits-all constraints and ensuring the right stakeholders are always involved.

Reduced Approval Times: Parallel processing within tiers means faster decisions without sacrificing oversight.

Improved Governance: Multi-level reviews ensure policies meet all organizational requirements before implementation.

Enhanced Scalability: As your team grows, your approval processes can grow with you.

Better Risk Management: Critical policies get the scrutiny they deserve through appropriate stakeholder involvement.

Increased Flexibility: Different policy types can have different approval requirements—no more one-size-fits-all constraints.

Why It Matters: Policy Governance That Grows With You

While some tools restrict you to three approvers per tier, cap tiers at six, and limit flexibility around consensus rules or change requests—often behind higher-tier plans—Drata gives you up to 25 approvers per tier, full control over approval logic, and advanced workflows without the gatekeeping.

We’ve built Configurable Policy Approvals to meet you where you are now and scale as your organization grows. Whether you need one quick sign-off or a five-step chain of reviewers with custom rules, it’s all configurable. All auditable. All in one place.

Getting Started

Configurable Approval Workflows are available now in your Policy Center in Drata. Navigate to Policy Center > Policy page > Workflows tab to configure your first multi-tier approval process.

Pro Tip: Start simple with 1-2 tiers and expand as you identify optimization opportunities. You can always modify workflows as your organizational needs evolve.

Explore how Configurable Policy Approvals helps GRC teams automate with clarity, accountability, and control. Book a demo to see it in action.