How Varonis achieved FedRAMP compliance with echo

Meet Varonis

Over the past more than two decades, Varonis has become a global leader in data security, helping some of the world’s largest organizations protect their most valuable asset: their data. With hundreds of developers, a sprawling set of on-prem, cloud, and SaaS services, and dozens of compliance frameworks including SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, and more, security is deeply embedded into every layer of Varonis’s engineering lifecycle. As a cybersecurity company serving highly regulated enterprises, security is treated as a first principle, not an added feature.

The vulnerability & FedRAMP challenge

Container security had become one of the most demanding parts of Varonis’s engineering lifecycle. Dozens of services, thousands of packages, and a constant flow of scanner outputs meant new vulnerabilities surfaced daily. Each finding needed to be validated, triaged, and patched – often across multiple containers at once.

The workload intensified when Varonis began preparing for FedRAMP. Federal requirements meant that every container in scope needed to be remediated, FIPS-validated, and kept continuously clean as new CVEs emerged. Internal attempts to manage this manually quickly proved unsustainable. Fixing a single container took 2-3 weeks, involving deep dependency tracing, cryptography validation, repetitive patching, and countless cycles of retesting. Multiplied across dozens of containers, the effort stretched into months.

And because FedRAMP deadlines are strict, any delays risked triggering the need to file formal POA&Ms and justify delays to auditors – a deeply burdensome and time-draining process.

Why Varonis chose echo

Before hearing about echo, Varonis tried working with another vendor in the space. The experience was slow, expensive, and rigid, leaving the team frustrated and looking for a partner who could actually move at their pace.

That’s why everything changed when Lior’s team discovered echo. The solution wasn’t just about patching images – echo provided continuously updated, FIPS-validated, vulnerability-free base containers that dropped seamlessly into their existing workflows.

The image coverage was vast, and the team was quick to deliver on requests. “Even when we sent over a long list of containers, almost everything was already supported at the start,” Lior said. “And any that weren’t were immediately added by echo upon request.”

Implementation was smooth: simply choose the image from echo’s registry, plug it into the build, test, and deploy. No cryptographic debugging, dependency digging, or rebuild cycles. Just clean, compliant containers ready to ship.

Real results and federal-grade impact

The impact of echo was immediate. “The time saved is definitely huge,” Lior noted when reflecting on the shift his teams have experienced since switching to echo. With vulnerability-free images in place, the team has entered FedRAMP audits with complete confidence and has passed without any container-related issues.

Engineering has gained back enormous amounts of time previously lost to triage and patching as vulnerability noise dropped across scanner tools. Teams are now able to focus on product development instead of chasing security issues across dozens of microservices.

Compliance has also become dramatically smoother. With echo maintaining clean, FIPS-validated images in the background, Varonis has reduced risk across the entire platform and avoided the operational burden of preparing POA&Ms and repeating remediation cycles. “We reached our FedRAMP deadlines with everything remediated,” Lior says. “It’s taken a massive burden off our shoulders. I can’t recommend it enough.”

Takeaway

With echo, Varonis has fundamentally changed how it approaches container security, engineering efficiency, and compliance. What used to take weeks of manual effort per container is now handled automatically behind the scenes, giving engineers back the time and focus to build features instead of chasing vulnerabilities. Risk is lower, audits are smoother, and the entire container ecosystem is finally predictable and manageable.

“echo understood exactly what we needed – the problem, the timelines, the pressure. Everything we asked for was either already there or added within days,” Lior explained. “It’s been a professional, responsive partnership that helped us achieve our goals faster than we imagined.” For a company securing some of the world’s most sensitive data, echo has become a strategic advantage.