SOC 2

SOC 2 for startups: a simple, affordable path to compliance

When your startup actually needs SOC 2, what is involved, and how to get there without an enterprise budget.

For a lot of startups, SOC 2 arrives as a sentence in a sales email: "we will need your SOC 2 report before we can sign." Suddenly compliance is on the critical path to revenue. The good news is that SOC 2 for a startup does not have to be slow or expensive. Here is the practical path.

When does a startup actually need SOC 2?

You need SOC 2 when your customers start asking for it, which usually happens as you move upmarket from small customers to mid-market and enterprise buyers. If security questionnaires and "do you have SOC 2?" are showing up in your deals, it is time. If they are not yet, you can plan ahead without rushing.

Type I or Type II?

SOC 2 comes in two forms. A Type I report assesses your controls at a single point in time; it is faster to get and often enough to unblock an early deal. A Type II report assesses that your controls operated effectively over a period, commonly three to twelve months, and is what most serious buyers eventually want. A common startup path is Type I first to unblock sales, then Type II over the following months.

What is actually involved

SOC 2 is built around the Trust Services Criteria, with Security as the mandatory core and Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity and Privacy added if relevant to your customers. In practice the work is:

• Writing a set of security policies that reflect how you actually operate.
• Putting sensible controls in place: access control, multi-factor authentication, logging, change management, vendor management and so on.
• Gathering evidence that those controls exist and are followed.
• Engaging an independent auditor to examine it and issue the report.

A lightweight starting checklist

• Decide which Trust Services Criteria apply to you (Security at minimum).
• Nominate an owner. SOC 2 needs one person driving it.
• Draft your core policies from templates rather than a blank page.
• Turn on the basics: MFA everywhere, least-privilege access, logging, backups.
• Map each control to the evidence that proves it, and keep that evidence in one place.
• Pick Type I or Type II based on how quickly you need the report.
• Choose your auditor early and give them tidy access.

Keeping it affordable

The trap for startups is spending more on the compliance platform than on the audit itself. Enterprise tools are built for large, complex environments and priced accordingly. A small startup does not need dozens of live integrations to get a clean SOC 2 report; it needs the controls laid out, the evidence organised, and the auditor able to review it.

How CertAssist helps

CertAssist gives you the SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria on a clear board, editable policy and evidence templates so you are not writing from scratch, and read-only access for your auditor to speed up the examination, all for a flat US$375 a month. It does not plug into your systems, so there is nothing to breach and nothing to set up. For a startup that just needs to get certified and get back to building, that is usually exactly the right amount of tool.

Related guides

• SOC 2 compliance software

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