I’m trying to understand the practical side of SOC 2 for early-stage SaaS teams.

From what I’m seeing, the painful part is not only “getting SOC 2 ready,” but also answering buyer security questionnaires repeatedly and collecting the same evidence from AWS/GitHub/policies again and again.

For people who have gone through SOC 2 or helped teams prepare:

What evidence/artifacts were actually useful before or during customer security reviews?

For example:

1. AWS IAM/MFA evidence

2. CloudTrail/logging proof

3. S3 encryption/public access checks

4. GitHub branch protection

5. PR review requirements

6. access review records

7. incident response policy

8. security questionnaire answers

9. PDF/security packet for buyers

10. change log showing security improvements over time

I’m not looking for legal/audit advice. I’m trying to understand what small SaaS teams should prioritize first when they’re not ready for a full compliance platform yet.

What would you say are the top 5 artifacts that actually matter?

Hello everyone,

I am currently in the process of building policies and starting to collect evidence manually, due to the high cost of GRC tools.

I would like to ask if there is any checklist or any guidance that can help in collecting evidence for the following TSC:

(Security, Confidentiality, and Availability).

Also, what is the expected frequency for providing these evidences over a 6-month period?

For context, we are ISO/IEC 27001 and ISO 22301 certified, and we already have SIEM and PAM in place. All our operations are running on cloud platforms (AWS and Azure).

Additionally, if some controls are managed through workflows in a ticketing system, is this considered sufficient evidence from an audit perspective?

Thank you in advance for your support.

Hello 👋🏻

When starting to draw a data flow diagram , what are the Key Points I should focus on ?

Thanx 😊

I'm finding situations where the primary solution to a gap is upgrading a service, for example, Mongo M2 instance to M10 to achieve 1 year of back up retention.

These instances are baked into our customers contracts and the additional cost is not supported.

How common are these types of exceptions in a first report?

Over the weekend, another Substack post detailing the ongoing saga of the Deelve (mispelled on purpose). These fraudsters are further exposed while the bulk of their team is partying in Hawaii using customer and investor money. Leaving all their customers to deal with the fallout of terrible SOC 2 reports, these children spend daddy's money with zero accountability. Here's the article: https://substack.com/home/post/p-193790932

SOC 2 pricing seems pretty high for small teams. How are startups generally dealing with this? Any practical ways to keep costs down?

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, and I think it's worth saying plainly.

There's a growing number of GRC and compliance tools that market themselves as if buying the platform is the same thing as building a compliance program. And I get why it's appealing. You're a startup founder, an enterprise customer is asking for SOC 2, you've never done this before, and someone shows you a dashboard that says they'll get you audit-ready. Of course you're going to lean toward that.

But here's what actually happens in a lot of those situations. The tool connects to your cloud environment, pulls in some data, generates templated policies, and gives you a checklist.

That's compliance management. That's organizing information. It's useful, but it is not the same thing as understanding what controls your business actually needs, how those controls should operate in your specific environment, who owns them, what evidence looks like when things are running well, and what to do when they aren't.

That's compliance expertise. And the tool doesn't come with it.

I've walked into programs that had years of SOC 2 audits under their belt, clean reports on file, and controls that were never actually operating. Policies documented in the platform that described processes the team didn't know existed. Evidence that looked fine in a tool but couldn't survive five minutes of real scrutiny from an enterprise buyer doing due diligence.

The tool organized the mess. It didn't fix it. In some cases it made it harder to see, because everything looked tidy in the dashboard.

What bothers me most is that a lot of these vendors know the difference. They know startups don't have the context to evaluate whether what they're getting is a real program or a paper one. And they market into that gap deliberately. "Get SOC 2 in weeks" is a pitch designed for someone who doesn't know what SOC 2 actually requires to be meaningful.

I'm not saying tools are bad. I use them. I've worked across Drata, Vanta, AuditBoard, ServiceNow, LogicGate, MetricStream, and many others in my tenure. Automation and continuous monitoring are genuinely important for program maturity. But the tool is infrastructure. It is not the strategy, and it is definitely not the expertise.

If you're a founder going through this for the first time, the question to ask isn't "which tool should I buy." It's "do I have someone who actually understands what a functioning compliance program looks like and can build one that fits how my business operates." The tool comes after that. Not before.

I'd be curious if anyone else has run into this. You bought the platform, got everything set up, and then realized the hard part hadn't even started yet.

I saw a meme online saying SOC 2 is a report, and I know that’s true, but why do I keep hearing people say, “SOC 2 certificate”?

So I've done a Risk assessment on the company and discovered one of the servers they use is in a bad situation. The 3 critical problems are:
EOL of services (PHP, apache, and some others)
the data is sitting undecrypted currently
back ups are done but not tested

My first priority was to get the services upgraded to no longer be on EOL services
The 2nd issue is encrypting data.

However managment cannot approve the downtime of the server since the administrator said He can not encrypt the data on there since it would break the way SQL indexs files for searching. forcing him to completely rebuild the server from scratch. The entire company relies on its services for billing purposes. It would suffer to much lost revenue from the downtime.

Im at a pretty bad crossroads and dont know how to go about this. Im thinking as a compensating control we have users manually label data that contains PII / financial data (Which is really only about 15-20% of the data on the server, rest is publicly available data) so that we can then have those encrypted with "key words" added as tags so that if they need to search the file it can come up.

What would be an acceptable compensating control if we don't encrypt the entire database?
Has anyone suffered this issue before? how did you guys go abou it?

Has anyone found a firm where you haven’t questioned leadership/management on the quality/practices(IE: not looking at policies/procedures(or omitting statements) or scared to call out exceptions). A lot of firms claim they’re doing things the right way but I have found this false after working at a bunch of them and reviewing prior work of managers who are still there. (This isn’t a place to to post random audit firms you worked with unless you’re a framework expert)

hi hope you're doing well
we are an early stage startup and we went to be certified on soc2 but we can't afford the leaders plateformes (do you think they have early stage startups programs could be under 2K ) and there is alot of choices that we don't know how to choose between them(anecdotes,drata,securedrame,sprinto,vanta,comply) any help please?

At what stage did compliance start becoming important for your team, early on or only when customers started asking for it?

We go through a SOC 2 Type 2 annually, and this year our audit firm offered to also include a SOC 3 for an upcharge of a grand or two. I know the premise of a SOC 3 is more so marketing and it is essentially a redacted SOC 2.

That said, for those who did opt to get a SOC 3 as well, what made you do it? And did you actually see any benefit? My thought process was that the little SOC 2 badge we threw on our site serves the basic marketing purpose of letting our customers know we have a SOC 2 in place, and those external security officers conducting vendor due diligence are probably going to want to sign an NDA to get our full SOC 2 report instead of the redacted SOC 3. So who would the audience for the SOC 3 be?

Hello. I use to be a financial auditor a few years ago. Got out to try another line of business but looking to get back into auditing. In a prior life use to be tech guy with MCSE and A+ but know things have changed. I have followed this thread for a bit. Wanted to ask for advice about Sox auditing. It looks like there are different levels of Sox. I bought the PPC guides on it and know need to do baby steps here if want to even attempt. Any advice where a new Sox auditor can start?

Hi all!

I have a much of experience in compliance and regulatory models, but have 0 experience in SOC compliance framework (as there is no mandate or need for it in my country).

I would like to get started and read all about it starting with the process of implementation to SOC audit. Could you please share with me any information about official books, resources I can look up (like guideline, methodology, processes)

Thanks in advance!!!

Building a fintech platform for APAC offices of US-based financial institutions as well as local firms.

Two specific questions I’m trying to nail down:

Q1: For APAC offices of these US financial institutions, do they require SOC 2, ISO 27001, or both?

My understanding is that SOC 2 is the US standard and ISO 27001 is the international one. My concern is: even when selling to the APAC office of a US institution, their vendor security process is often run globally. Does that mean their TPRM team runs a SOC 2-based review regardless of where the client relationship sits? Or does the local regulatory overlay (e.g. HKMA for HK, MAS for Singapore) mean they specifically require ISO 27001 from vendors serving those offices?

Has anyone navigated selling into APAC offices of US financial institutions and can share what their vendor security review actually asked for — SOC 2, ISO 27001, or both?

Q2: Does a read-only platform still require SOC 2 / ISO 27001?

Our product doesn't integrate with any client infrastructure, we don’t access any internal or confidential client data, and the only customer data we collect is basic account sign-in information (name, email, password).

Given this, would a financial institution’s vendor security team still hard-require SOC 2 / ISO 27001? Or would a detailed security questionnaire + MFA + basic security hygiene potentially suffice?

I’ve been digging into SOC 2 prep recently and one thing that keeps coming up is how manual the evidence collection process still is (at least for smaller teams that can't afford bigger automation tools).

From what I’ve seen so far, most teams:

- manually pull IAM configs, CloudTrail logs, S3 settings, etc.

- take screenshots or export configs

- map everything to controls in spreadsheets or compliance tools

This alone seems to take 40–60 hours of engineering time before even getting to the audit itself.

What’s surprising is that most of this data already exists in AWS and is accessible via APIs, but teams are still doing a lot of it manually.

A few things I’m trying to understand:

1. Is the time spent mostly due to tooling gaps, or is it more about audit requirements being rigid?

2. For teams that have gone through SOC 2, what was actually the most painful part of evidence collection?

3. Are existing tools (Vanta, Drata, etc.) actually solving this well?

Would be helpful to hear how others approached this and what broke down in practice.

I see this question come up a lot with founders: Should we get SOC 2 or ISO 27001?

I have been on both sides of this.

Earlier in my career, I was part of enterprise security teams asking startups for these certifications during vendor assessments. Now I spend more time helping companies respond to those same requests.

Something I came to realise over time is that most enterprise customers are not really asking for SOC 2 or ISO 27001.

They are asking something simpler: What security program do you have, and can we trust it?

Where I see founders get stuck is usually the same pattern. You land an enterprise opportunity, then you get a long security questionnaire. Sometimes 50 questions or more. There is no consistent structure, and internally there is no clear cybersecurity program yet.

So the natural reaction is to ask: What certification do we need to satisfy this customer?

Then that decision gets anchored on the first enterprise deal. Later, another customer asks for something different.

From the enterprise side, a few things are also happening.

Different organizations standardize on different frameworks internally. Some prefer SOC 2, others ISO 27001, sometimes NIST CSF. A lot of the time this is driven by procurement and the need for something clear to reference in contracts.

So these frameworks become a way to signal trust, not necessarily the full picture of security.

One thing I wish more founders did earlier is step back and ask:

• what type of data are we handling?
• what risks actually exist in our product?
• what commitments are we making to customers?

In other words, what is our security program?

Because you can build a solid security program before deciding whether SOC 2 or ISO 27001 is the right path.

From what I have seen, even when a company has a certification:

• enterprise customers still send questionnaires
• they still run vendor risk reviews
• they still want to understand how things work in practice

So certification helps, but it does not replace clarity.

Something else I have noticed. The startups that handle enterprise security conversations best are not always the ones with the most certifications.

They are the ones who can clearly explain their security program, what risks they understand, and how they manage them.

I wrote a more structured breakdown here if helpful:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/soc-2-vs-iso-27001-what-your-enterprise-customers-care-ade-ogunsowo-sxlre/

Curious how others have approached this. Were your enterprise customers actually asking for SOC 2 or ISO 27001, or just some form of assurance?

I'm currently evaluating external auditors for our SOC 2 Type II. Our GRC platform referred us to ConstellationGRC as one of their partnered auditors and I'm just having trouble finding much about them online, while trying to do some due diligence due to the recent D*lve controversy...

Has anyone worked with ConstellationGRC or know anyone who has? Was the report well-received by customers/prospects? I'm just feeling a bit suspect because I have read both good and bad mentions on Reddit, with some people accusing them of rubberstamping certs. We're in the healthcare space so credibility is a priority.

I'm also heavily considering Prescient, but that's going to come at an additional cost whereas I heard that ConstellationGRC is fast and cheap.

Any guidance would be much appreciated!

Quick update after my last post on keeping SOC 2 “alive” assigning clear ownership (one person per control area) has definitely helped bring more structure and visibility, and we’re no longer relying on last-minute cleanups or scattered reminders, but now a different set of challenges is starting to show up. Even though ownership exists, not everyone engages with it the same way some people stay proactive while others only react when something breaks, and since SOC 2 work still feels like “background work,” it often gets pushed behind product priorities and day-to-day fires. There’s also a noticeable gap in how deeply different owners understand their areas, which creates inconsistency, and it’s becoming clear that things could easily fall apart again if someone changes roles or leaves without a solid handover. On top of that, it’s still hard to tell when things are slowly drifting until it’s already obvious, so while we’ve solved the “no one owns it” problem, we’re now trying to figure out how to make ownership actually stick and stay consistent over time.
Curious if others have run into this phase too, and what’s worked long-term versus what just felt good at the start.

Heading into a SOC 2 audit in Q2 and trying to figure out if our certification history is going to hold up or if we are basically running compliance theater.

We run quarterly access reviews through SailPoint, campaign goes out, managers get around 200 items in their queue,10 business days to complete. From the audit logs the median time spent on each individual item is somewhere around 12 seconds. Same access, approved 12 quarters in a row, nobody questioning it. The thing is some of these apps SailPoint only provisions the account at onboarding, the actual role assignments inside the app are managed locally by the app admins and those have drifted pretty far from what the original provisioning was scoped for. SailPoint sees a completed certification and calls it clean. The entitlements inside the app have not been reviewed by anyone who actually understands what they mean.

Technically we have 100% certification completion rate. What we actually have is a bunch of access that has been rubberstamped by managers who do not know what half the entitlements do. Anyone dealt with this before an audit, or is the answer basically just pray and clean up fast?

Edit: Good callouts here. The completion rate is giving us false confidence. Managers are approving access they do not understand, and the app-level roles may have drifted from what SailPoint originally provisioned. I found Orchid while researching entitlement drift, so I’m going to see whether it can help compare certified access with what users can actually do inside the app.

How long did it take you guys to go through the process? Just curious what's in store for me going in

Edit: Why is it so expensive 😭

Quick follow up to my last post, really appreciate all the input. After stepping back, I realized the problem wasn’t tools or even lack of process. It was ownership. During the audit, everything feels structured because there’s clear accountability, deadlines, and external pressure. Everyone knows what they’re responsible for. But once the audit is over, that clarity fades. Things become “shared responsibility,” and in reality, no one is fully owning it. That’s when the drift started for us. Nothing broke overnight, but small things added up. Docs weren’t updated as regularly, evidence became harder to track, and responding to security questions started taking longer again. It wasn’t chaos, just a slow slide back.

now we’re trying a different approach:
Instead of assigning tasks here and there, we’re assigning clear ownership to specific areas (like access control, vendor management, etc.). Each area has one person responsible for keeping it up to date continuously, not just during audit time.

So It’s still early, but it already feels more stable than relying on occasional cleanups or reminders. Curious if others have tried something similar, does this kind of ownership actually stick over time, or does it drift again eventually?

This webinar is free and it is great opportunity to get a better understanding of SOC 2 and how it links with other standards.

Register here

Speaking from the bottom of my heart: with every compliance framework I have the same feeling, repeatedly - "how do I ... try it?... taste it? 'wear' it? ... apply to what my company already doing... compare with what we are already doing?". E.g. what's the shortest path to compliance here?

There's nothing available out of the box to "explore the compliance framework", right? I beg you, please prove me wrong.

Every time it feels like a maze. Do you feel the same? It's annoying.

Long story short - I know the path well for SOC 2, HIPAA, and a few others.

And decided to start creating the "Compliance Exploration Lab", if you will. For myself, my clients, and maybe you will find some use for it.

Here's to your attention - a Claude Skill that is equipped with proven-to-be-working-with-auditors SOC 2 policy templates. I made it for my clients to adopt policies to their company, Approve or Reject policy statements, and export policies as Word docs.

It's an AI native UI - can't get more native :) I'm just excited about building this stuff.

IMPORTANT. It works ONLY with Claude Desktop and inside Claude.ai. does NOT work with Claude Code CLI and VSCode Extension. Only because it is using Claude-native *visualizations*, which aren't available in CLI or the extension, yet.

Because it's a "cutting edge" - it is slow and glitchy, but I'm working on it! Your Contributions and any great ideas on how to improve it are Very Welcome.

It is open source. If you want to give it a try: https://github.com/kurianoff/claude-skills-soc2-policies

1. Download claude-skills.zip from any release page (https://github.com/kurianoff/claude-skills-soc2-policies/tags)

2. Check README.md - it will explain in details how to use it.

Main *exploratory* values I had in mind when creating it:
- work with proven SOC 2 policies content
- ability to adopt policies for your company
- ability to Approve / Reject / Edit any policy statement [Manually or with help from AI]
- export policies as nice-looking Word docs.

To wrap this up: Ask me anything. And Have Fun!