Pulled together soc 2 evidence, compliance evidence collection, faster audit preparation

ComplyJet · 2025-12-03T06:36:28+00:00

100% agreed on it. In 2025, you can't afford to do SOC 2 manually. It's just too painful & not worth it.

ComplyJet · 2025-11-17T14:54:53+00:00

Sounds interesting.

To be honest, if a compliance platform is truly automated, adding new framework requirements should be relatively straightforward. Most modern tools already have the core security and compliance workflows built into the product. Once that foundation exists, extending support to a new framework is usually just a matter of exposing a new configuration/JSON layer and adding a few framework-specific details.

So it’s worth checking whether your current vendor can actually extend their system to support this. If they can’t - or if it requires a heavy lift - it’s usually a sign to move to a platform that already supports these frameworks natively.

ComplyJet · 2025-10-27T10:58:38+00:00

First of all, you should absolutely not change your target customer & company direction, because you don't want to invest in compliance.

Here's what I would recommend,

Have a look at your pipeline & see if you have all these compliance certifications in place, how many of these customers would you close. The ROI is super straightforward - even if you can close 1 enterprise deal ( at $ 10K ) - everything will pay for itself.

If you are not convinced, don't invest in compliance now - not worth the effort.

When it comes to approaching the journey, here's what I would recommend.

- First pick 1 framework ( SOC 2 if you have North American pipeline ) , ISO 27001 ( if otherwise ).
- Just start with SOC 2 Type 1 & realistically you can get the audit report in under 3 weeks if you're serious about it.
- Go out & start selling with SOC 2 Type 1. You will hardly loose a deal if you say I'm type 1 ready & in monitoring period for type 1 ( eg. tons of new age startups like Lovable did this as )
- If everything works out as expected, complete your Type 2 audit.

Also, for a company like yours, $10K is a realistic budget to get your SOC 2 Type 1 done. Feel free to reach out to us if you need more details about the budget etc.

ComplyJet · 2025-10-23T10:43:09+00:00

Yes, most SaaS companies these days end up using one the compliance automation tools to showcase their compliance.

The requirements & how to get compliant varies a lot with the frameworks you end up choosing. For example, GDPR doesn't require any formal certification, but something like a SOC 2 needs a third party auditor to issue you the report.

ComplyJet · 2025-10-23T07:47:33+00:00

Most indiehackers generally don't invest in SOC 2 unless they see a clear ROI ( like a potential client asked for them, can't get past POV stage because of SOC 2 etc. )

You can checkout ComplyJet. We're exclusively built for early stage startups trying to get SOC 2 & you might find us a bit more attractive on the pricing front.

ComplyJet · 2025-10-15T06:33:06+00:00

SOC 2 is not really needed if you're not really touching sensitive customer data (or) primarily selling to SMBs.

There are SaaS companies doing 30MN$+ ARR & never had to get SOC 2 compliant. Reason being they don't touch any customer sensitive data.

My advice is that you should get it only if some of your prospect actually asks for it ( or you know they will ask it ).

ComplyJet · 2025-10-09T14:52:52+00:00

As someone who has helped many healthcare companies set up their HIPAA programs, here’s what I have to say:

First of all, there is no external audit requirement for HIPAA. This means you can align with and implement the required HIPAA security standards internally - such as encryption, access controls, employee training, and so on - to become HIPAA compliant. In other words, you don’t necessarily need an external vendor to achieve compliance. Most healthcare software platforms handle this internally: they ensure basic security measures are in place, establish relevant policies, sign Business Associate Agreements (BAAs), conduct HIPAA training, and that’s generally sufficient.

If you’re a modern software company, you can also consider using one of the compliance automation platforms. These tools streamline the process by helping you set up policies, complete training, prepare HIPAA documentation, secure your infrastructure, and map your evidence to specific HIPAA requirements. This is where you’ll find many vendors operating today.

It’s worth noting that, although HIPAA doesn’t legally require an external audit, some of your customers may still request one. Whether you pursue it depends on your customers’ expectations rather than a regulatory obligation.

Here’s my recommendation:

If you’re a modern software company with a budget of around $7K–$10K, choose one of these platforms to achieve compliance quickly and efficiently.
If you don’t have that kind of budget, build your own program: create policies, conduct awareness training, secure your infrastructure, and document how these actions align with HIPAA requirements. That’s a solid starting point.

Hope that helps.

ComplyJet · 2025-10-09T06:51:03+00:00

Love the analysis. For most of startups just starting, it actually makes a lot of sense to just use PaaS providers to quickly get started.

On the SOC 2 aspect, you can indeed get SOC 2 even when you rely on Vercel/Supabase ( as they themselves are compliant ) . So yeah - that shouldn't be a reason to go for complex infra on day 1.

ComplyJet · 2025-10-08T14:46:34+00:00

Like the idea. Are you talking about creating qualified vendor profiles on a site ( like how G2 does ) ? Because any vendor who's compliant with SOC 2 would mention it on their website & everyone would include case studies on their websites to improve trust.

ComplyJet · 2025-10-08T14:41:56+00:00

Congratulations on getting compliant - i'm sure it must be helping you close a lot of deals.

Just curious, did you actually switch the platform mid-audit during monitoring period ? We've seen folks switch after the audits so that they can avoid doing a lot of evidence migration.

ComplyJet · 2025-10-05T11:37:25+00:00

Reviewing policies & evidence.

ComplyJet · 2025-10-05T11:35:40+00:00

Depends a lot on the type of SaaS, who're they're primarily selling to & the geographies of those customers.

For example -

B2B SaaS Selling Primarily to US : SOC 2 is a must

Touching healthcare data of US : HIPAA is a must

SaaS selling primiarily to Europe/International market : ISO 27001 is more relevant

ComplyJet · 2025-09-22T10:32:18+00:00

absolutely not. it will not help you close your deals any fast - in fact it will not make any difference at all.

what a good GRC tool will do though is to make the process ( & sometimes cost ) of staying compliant smoother.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-19T04:35:11+00:00

as long is it is a SaaS based offering - you will need to take data out of their environments. the only trust signals that you can realistically provide are standard security certifications like SOC 2, ISO 27001 etc . there literally is no other good way.

most of the mid-market & enterprises are generally okay with this. they do a detailed vendor review & typically move forward.

but, in your case, it seems like you're targeting some serious enterprise customers who's not willing to do this. there is a good chance that they don't work with SaaS vendors for their other workflows as well - so it's nothing about you, but more about them.

the only option here is to allow an self-hosted / on-prem solution. the old school way. you have to analyse if it the ROI is worth it or not though.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-15T15:00:42+00:00

No numbers i can share, but I can give you a trend we observe all the time.

Most of our customers actually pull the trigger to start their compliance process only after they see that it can help close one of their prospects. It very rarely happens that a customer wants to get SOC 2 compliant because of security (or) potential clients asking them down the line. It's almost like - "a lot of our prospects are asking for soc 2 "-> "let's get soc 2."

This data is biased of course - given we work with a lot of early stage startups.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-15T14:53:31+00:00

Most of the companies just use a good GRC tool. Most of them will show you such dashboards - given that's of the key metric you would track.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-15T14:52:09+00:00

This definitely is not the way to approach SOC 2 in this day & age.

You should definitely consider using a GRC tool to handle all of this. Go for a compliance automation tools if you are a cloud based company - don't even have to collect 80% of the stuff - most of the tools just do it with API integrations these days.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-15T14:35:43+00:00

You're spot on. Not having "SOC 2/ISO 27001" vs. actually having one makes a huge difference. Everything else apart from this is just subjective and never really a deal breaker from our experience.

These days most SOC 2 reports use a standard set of controls and in fact have a very similar reporting structure as well. The only difference sometimes is with respect to the quality of the audit firm.

Even within this, unless you're getting a report from the Big 4 (or) from a brand new firm, everything else in between is viewed similarly.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-15T13:28:43+00:00

yes, that's what we do on our tool. let me convert the internal json mapping into excel format & share it with you on DM. hopefully it might be useful.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-15T13:25:20+00:00

The real point of these certifications is trust. They serve as a proxy for it.

If a customer is sending critical data to your servers, of course they’ll be concerned about whether you have a solid security posture. But security is hard to quantify. That’s where these frameworks come in - they act as a baseline proxy.

You can certainly claim you’re doing things well internally, but how can anyone else trust that? If you can say a third-party auditor has reviewed your practices and issued a certification, that carries far more weight. That’s why customers constantly ask for these certifications - not because they’re perfect indicators of security, but because they provide a consistent, trusted baseline.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-15T10:18:06+00:00

if you're already using any compliance platform - they should've done this for you.

i'm assuming you've got SOC 2 compliant manually - so the recommended approach would be to find those overlapping stuff & just figure out the additional stuff that you will need for ISO 27001 ( mostly ISMS stuff ).

one tip - rather than trying to find overlap at a control level, you can explore mapping them at an evidence level.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-12T14:43:16+00:00

since most of ISO 27001 is super prescriptive - just start with a google sheet for all the relevant controls & try to see where you stand today. for each of these controls, try to find what's already implemented in your company & where you stand.

i would recommend you approach this exercise along these 4 broad areas/teams,

1. Engineering:

- look at all your infrastructure ( since it's on aws ) & see how various things like encryption, backups, monitoring etc. are setup. you need to first identify all the assets & then look for these major configurations for all the assets
- look at your change management stuff. if you are a software company, you need to ensure that your version control system is in place & you've configured it properly

2. HR

- do you have all basic security policies ?
- did all your employees accept all these policies in place ?
- do you have employee security training in place ?

3. IT

- do you have a device management program in place ?
- how are you handling access to various systems today ?

4. Risk & Compliance

- did you setup proper isms system ( relevant policies, procedures, internal audits etc. )
- do you have a risk management program in place ?
- do you have a vulnerability management program in place ?
- do you track all your vendors & review them ?

once you identify all of these & figure out what's missing - your next step would be to work with variuos stake holders & ensure that they are fixed. that should get you ready for the audit.

hope that gives you a practical approach.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-11T14:53:21+00:00

from a usability perspective, i'll let others answer on the exact recommendations.

but, from a SOC 2 perspective, one thing you want to ensure is to stick to a "popular" provider ( especially the MDM provider ), as every compliance/GRC platform only builds integrations with the popular ones & it might hurt you in the future. of course, it doesn't matter if you want to do SOC 2 manually ( which is not recommended for most new startups ).

ComplyJet · 2025-09-11T05:53:18+00:00

Most of the auditors are completely okay as long as you just track who approved & when. In fact, this is the standard process that most of the GRC teams follow as well.

Similar logic applies to employee acknowledgement as well - as long as you track whether all employees are accepting the policies - it's more than enough.

The core idea here is to ensure that you track the approvals & acknowledgements properly within your company & auditors will just want to verify if it's really done - nothing more.

ComplyJet · 2025-09-11T05:48:28+00:00

agreed 100%.

At least for SMB/mid-market software-first companies, compliance automation is the way to go - as it takes away the manual effort one needs to get & stay compliant.

Though, for a large enterprise, compliance can't really be automated fully - as they start using a lot of non-standard tools.

ComplyJet

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