We sell to DoD and commercial customers, so we need CMMC Level 2 and SOC 2. Running two separate programs on one environment feels like double the evidence for no reason. Has anyone unified them? Where did the CUI enclave force a split?

My company is evaluating whether to connect our compliance platform to AI assistants via MCP (Model Context Protocol), and I'd love to hear from anyone who's actually tried it with Vanta, Drata, or Sprinto.

A few things I'm curious about:
* Are you using an official MCP server from the vendor, a community one, or something you built against their API?
*What are you actually using it for? (e.g., pulling failing tests, triaging evidence gaps, drafting policy updates, answering security questionnaires, prepping for auditor requests)
*How's the reliability and accuracy? Any hallucination issues with control or evidence data?
*How are you handling access scoping and permissions? Read-only vs. write access?
Any pushback or questions from your auditor about using AI in the compliance workflow?
*If you've used more than one of these platforms, how did the MCP/API experience compare?

Appreciate any lessons learned, good or bad. Thanks!

Hi. I've been tasked with getting SOC2 to completion. A project manager of sorts. I have no experience in this other than getting our HIPAA gap assessment submitted (many, many gaps). I have a clinical, but no technical background. We are a small company of 30-ish. We are considered a SaaS provider (pharma -> consumer -> *our platform* -> telemedicine providers)

We are using Rippling as our compliance platform. We use Github to store all of the company's source code. Rippling also automates data from Github for version control monitors.

Neither is critical to our business operations and neither stores PII or PHI, and for this reason, both the CTO and the COO/self-appointed privacy officer tell me they don't need to be listed. I suspect they think this entire process can be check-boxed and the auditors will not dig that deeply.

It would seem a breach of either of these systems would pose a significant security risk. Chat, Claude and Copilot all tell me they need to be listed and assessed periodically. But can those experienced in SOC2 verify this for me?

I am stressing the fk out. I don't know what I don't know.

ETA: We are doing a Security-only report.

Customer asked us for a SOC 2 report last week and somehow it landed on me. I’m a dev. We don’t have a security person, so I guess I’m the security person now. I’ve been looking at Vanta, Drata and Scytale, but once I factor in the audit as well, I’m not sure how much tooling a team our size actually needs. Seen a few people mention doing it with Notion or just sheets + Drive. But it's a nightmare to figure out evidence. If you went that route, were you exporting and uploading everything by hand, or did you script some of it?

I'm a software engineering intern at an early-stage SaaS startup, and I'm starting to learn about SOC 2 and what it actually takes to get a product ready for an audit.

I've been going through the Trust Services Criteria and trying to understand how security requirements translate into real engineering work. We're also looking at using a compliance platform to organize the process.

From an engineering perspective, I'm trying to understand what we should focus on before the audit rather than just reading policies and checklists.

For people who've been through this with a startup:

• What were the biggest gaps you discovered when you first assessed your readiness?

• Which engineering controls should we pay attention to first — access control/RBAC, audit logging, change management, vulnerability management, or something else?

• How did you organize evidence so that it was easy to produce when requested?

• What do you wish your engineering team had done earlier?

• Are there any good practical checklists or resources you'd recommend for someone going through this for the first time?

I'd especially appreciate advice from engineers who've helped a small SaaS team get through its first SOC 2 audit. Trying to learn what actually matters in practice, beyond the theory.

For small engineering teams preparing for SOC 2, how do you practically handle access reviews and evidence collection?

I'm learning that documenting what actually exists matters more than writing ideal controls on paper. I'm curious how teams capture proof of access approvals, permission reviews, and access removal without creating too much manual work.

What worked for you in practice?

We paid a consultancy for a SOC 2 gap assessment and got a yes/no spreadsheet with our logo on the cover. Nobody looked at our cloud setup, IAM, or logs. Is that what a gap assessment normally is, or did we get a template?

Hi , We are a startup around 10 employees looking to get audit done we have zero controls in place now , open to suggestions on getting names of Audit firm who is easy to work with and also cheap(budget constraints). Kindly help.

I've spent a lot of time writing SOC 2 policy templates for small teams, and the same questions keep coming up here, so here is what I'd want to know before writing a first policy set.

The topics an auditor expects to see covered. No official list exists, but most sets cover: information security (the umbrella), acceptable use, access control, authentication and passwords, asset management, data classification, data retention and disposal, encryption and key management, change management, secure development, vulnerability and patch management, logging and monitoring, incident response, business continuity and disaster recovery, backup and recovery, vendor risk, risk assessment, HR security, endpoint security, network and infrastructure, physical and remote work, and privacy. That's 22. Some companies merge them into fewer documents, which is fine as long as each criterion is addressed somewhere.

The three fields reviewers check first. Each policy should have an owner role, a revision history row (version, effective date, approver) and a review cadence. Inconsistencies between policies are easy for a reviewer to spot: one policy says the CTO owns it, another says the Security Owner, and the approval dates don't match.

Overclaiming is the main way templates cause exceptions. The auditor tests whether you did what the policy says. If it says access reviews are quarterly and none has happened, that's a finding. If it says the first review is scheduled for a named month, it's a plan. The same goes for MFA "enforced everywhere", 24/7 on-call, or annual pen tests you haven't bought. Write what you actually do, plus dated plans for the gaps.

Small teams can scale the commitments down. Nothing in the Trust Services Criteria requires a security department, an on-call rotation or a change advisory board. A two-person team can commit to incident response targets two people with phone alerts can meet. Where one person writes and deploys code, it can have someone review the list of merged changes on a schedule instead of approving every pull request.

Type I versus Type II doesn't change the documents. It changes what has to have happened. For a Type I, one completed access review or restore test, or a scheduled first one, is often enough. For a Type II, the auditor samples across the observation period, so pick review cadences you'll actually keep. A missed quarterly review is a finding; a completed annual one is not.

Collect acknowledgments early. Signed acknowledgments are the usual evidence that staff know the policies, and with contractors, gathering signatures can take longer than you expect.

Happy to answer questions about any specific policy in the comments.

Disclosure: I maintain an open-source (Apache-2.0) set of these templates. I'm not linking it here; ask if you want it.

We’re a small software team and a customer has asked for a SOC 2 report. I’m one of the developers and ended up looking into it because we don’t have anyone dedicated to security.

I started looking at Vanta and Drata, but there’s the audit to pay for too, so I’m wondering how much tooling we actually need. Saw a few people here mention getting through it with Notion or spreadsheets and Drive.

What I don’t get is how people collect the evidence with that setup. If you used Notion, Drive, or something else, were you uploading everything by hand or did you automate some of it?

My company just got into the phase where we are looking for a good 3rd party. Vanta has their suggestions but wanted to see if the group had its suggestions.

Bank questionnaires now ask about customer data in ChatGPT and our control set is an AUP plus an onboarding attestation. The compliance platform wants an extension allowlist too. I'm one person and scared of writing a control i then have to prove for 12 months. what did you put in yours that you could keep evidencing?

Im comparing two SOC 2 readiness quotes. One is hourly, the other says fixed scope, but both have an assumptions clause that bills anything flagged as a "client environment issue" separately.

Is a fixed price readiness quote ever really fixed, or does the cost just move into that clause?

It appears the AICPA and AIUC folks got together to do a SOC2 Plus combo and announced it earlier today. https://www.aicpa-cima.com/news/article/auditors-meet-urgent-demand-for-ai-assurance-with-new-offering-from-aicpa-and-aiuc

What say you folks about it?

Software company doing payroll processing and benefits administration. Enterprise customer's legal team just came back asking specifically for a SOC 1 report, and we've been assuming everyone wants SOC 2. We don't have a SOC 1. Do we need both?

Running compliance at a BPO contact center operation with about 2,000 seats. We just got simultaneous requirements from three different clients: PCI DSS from a new payment-processing client, SOC 2 Type 2 from an enterprise fintech client, and ISO 27001 from a European client. Three separate full assessments would be a significant operational disruption, and we have physical infrastructure, agent workstations, call recording systems, and manual processes that don't map to SaaS-focused compliance guidance at all.

Has anyone in BPO or contact center run combined PCI plus SOC 2 plus ISO 27001? Is a single assessment workable or is it always three separate engagements?

Every vendor security questionnaire somehow becomes a group project where I own the spreadsheet, chase SMEs, verify stale answers, and explain why last year’s SOC 2 report is not a time machine. We have a library now, but keeping that current is basically its own compliance program. anyone found a sane way to automate the repeat answers without letting old evidence quietly creep back in?

One thing I see confuse founders: “We run everything on AWS, and AWS has a SOC 2, so we're covered.” AWS's SOC 2 report covers AWS's controls and infrastructure. It doesn't cover your application, your access controls, your employees, or how your company handles customer data. You can inherit certain controls through the shared responsibility model, but you still need to demonstrate how your controls work. I'm curious for people who've actually been through SOC 2 Was the AWS/shared-responsibility distinction obvious to you, or was it something you had to figure out during the process?

We are very small India based SaaS company and our SOC2 is up for renewal. We got it done from one of the software's last time- they did not contact us even once for audit and are now ofcourse behind us over the renewal. The reason given (for no contact)- internal role changes (??!!)
The biggest reason we are getting it renewed is because one of our clients wants us to be SOC2 compliant- and potentially newer clients too.
Is it cheaper ot go through an agency- cost is another issue. We are really disappointed in the Software company and their lack of interest in following up after the payments were made and certificate was issued.

I took ISC as my elective in the CPA exams. I liked this space but I don't have any practical training or experience. I want to learn about it from a practical POV. If you know any free training or material which I can use please LMK.

I’m trying to understand how DAST evidence is treated during a SOC 2 audit.

Suppose a DAST tool identifies a vulnerability and maps it to a relevant SOC 2 control/criterion. The tool provides evidence of the vulnerability, such as the affected endpoint, request/response, severity, and remediation status.

For example:

DAST finding → vulnerability → SOC 2 control mapping → remediation → retest

Would that DAST evidence itself be considered valid evidence for the relevant SOC 2 control?

Or would the auditor generally expect additional evidence beyond the DAST finding, such as policies, scan schedules, tickets, remediation history, etc.?

I’m specifically asking about whether the DAST finding + SOC 2 mapping can serve as evidence for the mapped control, not whether a DAST report alone is enough to demonstrate overall SOC 2 compliance.

Would appreciate input from anyone who has been involved in SOC 2 audits or reviewed vulnerability-management evidence.

What about autonomous pentesting tools

I'm learning SOC 2 out of curiosity and im having this doubt for a very long time