Built to own the whole picture.
Security keeps failing in the gaps between vendors: the spaces where everyone covered their piece and nobody watched the whole. Droptine exists to be accountable for the whole.
30 minutes with the people who'd actually do the work.
Why Droptine exists
Most security failures don't trace back to a sophisticated attack. They trace back to a Tuesday: a password reused because nobody required otherwise, a vendor account left open because closing it was nobody's job, a backup that failed quietly in a folder nobody checked.
Each of those gaps had a vendor adjacent to it. None of them had an owner.
After an incident, every party can explain, accurately, why the gap wasn't theirs to watch. The explanations are all true, and the data is still gone.
Droptine was started to be the firm those gaps belong to. One party accountable for the whole picture: finding the exposure, closing it, and keeping it closed as the business changes.
What we believe
Security should match the consequence
A tax firm, a pipeline operator, and a defense contractor don't need the same program. They need controls sized to what a breach would actually cost them. We scope to consequence, not to a product catalog.
A document is not a program
WISPs, SSPs, policies — they matter, and we write them. But a document describes controls. If the controls don't exist, the document is a confession with a table of contents.
IT and security belong together
Devices, access, email, backups — every one is both an IT task and a security control. Companies that split them across vendors create exactly the gaps attackers look for.
Practical beats theatrical
No fear-based selling. No 80-page report that ends at the report. If we can't tell you what to fix first and why, we haven't done our job yet.
Leadership
Austin Buonasera
Austin Buonasera brings deep technical and government-side security experience to the work. What that background means for clients: he has seen how systems actually get compromised and what examiners actually check — so the program he builds is shaped by incidents and audits, not by vendor marketing.
Clayton Hauk
Clayton has spent his career building and running businesses. At Droptine he owns the client side of the work: scope that's clear before the engagement starts, communication a non-technical owner can act on, and pricing that doesn't need decoding.
Who we work with
Financial firms trusted with client financial lives. Energy operators where uptime is the business. Government contractors whose security posture decides what they can bid on.
Different industries, same profile: sensitive data or critical systems, real consequences, and owners who want the work done more than they want a show about it.
How we work
Exposure first
We don't open with a product list. We open with where risk actually lives in your business — then the recommendations have a reason behind them.
Priorities, not piles
Findings get ranked by consequence. You'll always know what we'd fix first and why it's ahead of the rest.
Implementation, not advice
We do the work — configure the controls, write the documentation, run the monitoring. Advice alone doesn't change your risk.
Maintenance, because drift is real
The program stays current as people, vendors, and systems change. Security that was true last year isn't a fact. It's a memory.
Talk to people who take the job as seriously as you take yours.
One conversation, plain English, and a straight read on where you stand — including the parts that are fine as they are.