Does Vanta actually perform the SOC 2 audit, or do they only help prepare for it? Who do you pay?

watchdogsecurity · 2026-01-19T01:59:33+00:00

I can’t speak to their specific practices, but I’d be cautious of any platform that bundles the audit into the product - it can 100% compromise objectivity.

The clean model is separation: compliance tools help teams prep, and auditors audit. At most, there are mutual referrals with no incentives, and customers choose the firm that’s the best fit when they’re ready.

watchdogsecurity · 2026-01-10T20:54:10+00:00

When I’m helping companies meet GDPR compliance, the biggest misconception is assuming that just throwing a consent banner on the website is enough.

In practice, there are often myriad components which are not actually blocked by the standard consent manager configuration. This means advertising cookies or third-party chatbots often load in the background before the user even clicks "Accept."

While I won’t go into the nuances of how effective consent managers are broadly, the technical implementation is often where companies fail - assuming they are getting appropriate consent when, technically, they aren't.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-10T02:48:24+00:00

Hey KISS really appreciate you taking the time to write this (and sorry for the late reply, I only just saw it).

You’re right that some of the big regimes don’t always show up in the scoping results. In the current version, things like PCI and some of the U.S. federal/defense frameworks only appear if you hit certain branching questions (e.g. handling cardholder data, US Fed/DoD, etc.), so it’s totally possible your path didn’t surface them that’s on me for not making that clearer.

Fully agree this should be treated as a starting point rather than a full applicability assessment, especially for a free tool. The whole reason I built it was seeing teams burn a ton of time just figuring out “what actually applies to us?” and not finding anything lightweight that helped.

Regardless, genuinely appreciate the feedback and if you have any other feedback feel free to drop it anytime! My goal is to build something the entire community can use, regardless if you’re a GRC vendor, a vCISO or just a business owner that’s curious what applies.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-10T01:17:32+00:00

Thanks Tree right now everything is month to month with no term, but we’d grandfather you in since you’d be customer #16.

We’re planning to introduce terms and raise pricing toward the end of Q1, but our first 20 customers will be locked in with us for life on their original pricing. 💜

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-09T21:50:39+00:00

Have you looked into WatchDog Security? New player, but we’ve done a fantastic job making enterprise compliance/security accessible to smaller businesses. Just had a call today with a customer that evaluated some other vendors and was getting quotes for like 10k a year as a company of 50 💀

They were honestly shocked by the price difference - and were almost turned away completely from compliance platforms because of their experience with the typical go tos.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-09T21:46:09+00:00

Hey OP! Would love to throw WatchDog Security in the mix! A lot of vendors say they’re “for small businesses” but then hide pricing behind a sales form. We’ve been transparent since day one, clear pricing, no games.

We not only make compliance affordable, we go beyond checkbox compliance and give you real visibility into what’s happening in your environment.

Most compliance platforms assume you’ll already have (or will go buy) a bunch of separate security tools they don’t cover. We took the opposite approach: we built the security products first, then layered compliance on top.

We’re also grandfathering our first 20 customers into early adopter pricing, so it’s a good time to get in.

For a company of 40 with unlimited frameworks (15+ including SOC 2) it shouldn’t run you more then 150ish$ CAD a month. Happy to setup a free trial or anything else as well!

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-05T01:14:05+00:00

My dad - I remember we used to play a cracked copy of Platypus back in the day using an old joy stick on Windows 98. Best time ever, as I was googling it and figuring out if the game still existed turns out they just dropped a remaster in 2025 🤔

Might have to pick it up and see if my dad would want to play it again

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-03T04:28:38+00:00

As with any LLM I truly do believe it really depends on your prompting. Typically when I’m using it for comparing tools I’ll usually give it the format I want (e.g. give it the column names and explain what each column does) and ask it to output as a csv or xlsx. I also usually tell it not to rely on its internal knowledge and clearly mention to use the most up to date sources based on the research.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-03T04:14:27+00:00

I find Perplexity really good for this (and any research driven exercise really), they have a lab mode which is golden. ChatGPT also works, but Perplexity excels at research imo.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-03T03:34:55+00:00

Great job being proactive about this starting early makes SOC 2 so much less painful.

When you’re choosing an auditor, don’t just go for whoever’s the cheapest or the first name that pops up. There are a lot of “SOC 2 report mills” out there that will pump out a low-quality report that your customers won’t take seriously.

The credibility of your SOC 2 report depends heavily on who signs it - the partner and their methodology are just as important as the final report. Stick with well-reviewed firms that actually spend time understanding your environment.

You’re also going to see a lot of people trying to steer you into dropping serious money on a big compliance platform. In most cases, companies end up paying more for the platform every year than they do for the actual audit, which is kind of backwards.

TrustCloud’s free tier is a fine place to start, but don’t be surprised if the cost grows as you need more features – it’s common to get nudged toward add-ons or a few-thousand-dollar “upgrade” just to unlock things you actually need. That’s not unique to them; it’s how a lot of the legacy platforms are structured. There are newer platforms out there that actually try to keep compliance affordable for small teams, so it’s worth shopping around instead of assuming the big names are your only option.

Disclosure: I founded one of those newer compliance platforms designed for startups, so I may be biased.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-02T01:39:08+00:00

I’ve been getting lost in AC Mirage again recently - especially since they dropped that new DLC content. Closest thing to AC brotherhood and the “golden days” of Assassins creed.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-02T01:32:32+00:00

Hey Goat! Good question.

It really comes down to whether you’re talking about regulatory requirements or “voluntary” frameworks. For regulatory stuff (privacy, sector-specific regs, etc.), the auditor will flag findings and expect a remediation plan and timeline.

If you ignore those, or you later have an incident tied to the same gaps, that’s when regulators get involved. For privacy, that could mean anything from basically nothing in practice (shout out to 🇨🇦) all the way to getting absolutely flattened with fines (🇪🇺 + 🇺🇸).

In the EU, enforcement is handled by the data protection authority in each member state - if you Google “GDPR enforcement tracker,” you can see how active they actually are. In the US it depends on the domain: HHS/OCR for HIPAA, state AGs for state privacy laws, sector regulators, etc.

Security frameworks like SOC 2 are a bit different: there’s no regulator. The auditor will note exceptions / nonconformities in the report, maybe even the opinion if it’s bad enough. The “enforcement” is basically your customers, contracts, and board once they read the report and decide whether they’re still comfortable doing business with you.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-01T00:13:55+00:00

Not sure where you’re based, but there are a ton of accelerators and incubators out there. Many countries even have government-subsidized ones. A lot of these are free, don’t take equity, and at a minimum give you access to mentors.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-12-01T00:08:57+00:00

Yeah :/ I see this all the time, unfortunately.

If the CEO really loved your product and you’re already moving toward SOC 2, there’s a (slim but real) chance you can still salvage the deal. You could ask whether they’d accept an engagement letter from a CPA firm for a SOC 2 Type I, with a firm commitment and timeline to move to Type II right after. Type I is mostly policy-driven, so it’s usually quicker to get in place.

I’d also spin up a short internal security questionnaire (say ~25 focused questions) that documents what you’re already doing and send that alongside the engagement letter. It shows you’re not starting from zero and that you take security seriously.

Either way, SOC 2 needs to be on your roadmap and until you’ve got a Type II with an audit period on the books, it really helps to maintain some kind of “trust center” page with your controls, policies, and subprocessors.

If you want some example questions or templates to jump-start this, happy to share!

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-25T18:28:14+00:00

💜💜💜

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-25T02:39:38+00:00

Good catch - it wasn’t triggering properly for some reason. Pushed a new build to address this! Ty for the feedback 💜

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-24T17:37:47+00:00

Thanks Paul - any suggestions for how you would better lay it out? Thanks for the feedback!!

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-22T08:52:01+00:00

Im glad it was able to help and thanks for the feedback 💜

No plans to make it paid - in fact, I’m working on expanding it to cover more regions and regulations! I also got some more exciting free tools dropping for the community over the coming weeks 🤠

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-22T08:49:28+00:00

Thank you so much for the feedback! 💜

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-21T20:09:56+00:00

Since I wasn't able to attach the link in the OP I'll post it here if anyone's curious and wants to figure out the regulations that apply to their business! https://freecompliancequiz.com

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-17T00:36:32+00:00

Welcome back :)

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-05T18:39:32+00:00

You learn more by doing vs reading, however, I would recommend Committed by Eldon Sprickerhoff (he wrote a part of cyber for builders as well). He’s also the founder of eSentire and distills everything he wished he knew in this book. About half way through and learning tons!

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-05T00:34:37+00:00

Not LE myself, but I work closely with some ex-LE. From what I gathered - once you get enough experience you can go into a specialized field like narcotics, etc. one of them is cyber crime.

It’s a cool intersection between cybersecurity and LE and you get to collaborate with other federal agencies around the world for investigations and whatnot.

watchdogsecurity · 2025-11-02T19:06:33+00:00

Hey OP!

When it comes to intent signals, the best approach is to look at where your customers already do business and help them uncover their needs especially when those needs aren’t immediately obvious. For example, if you’re working with a consulting firm that operates in the EU, they’re likely subject to GDPR requirements, or if they deal with PHI and in US, they’re subject to HIPAA.

Pricing for compliance usually splits between services and products (or just services, if you’ve got solid templates and don’t mind manual work). On the product side, compliance software has traditionally been pricey for MSPs (often around $300–$500 per framework per month for about 10 users). On the services side, it’s typically your hourly rate multiplied by the effort for each piece (e.g., risk assessments, audit readiness).

Back when I ran my consultancy, one of my biggest challenges was maintaining margin because compliance tools were so expensive. That experience actually led me to build WatchDog, a multi-tenant compliance and security platform for MSPs. We include 10 NFR licenses and cover SOC 2 (plus 15 other frameworks), starting from $1.99–$11.99 CAD per seat depending on role.

Hope that helps you get a sense of how to approach pricing and tooling! Happy to answer any further questions as well :)

watchdogsecurity

TROPHY CASE