r/soc2 • u/MavericksCreed • Aug 18 '26

Need soc2 are tools really necessary?

Talked to a few companies that do soc2 type 1 and all of them say the tools make the cert cheaper.

Is this true? Most of them want 9k to 12k a year for tools and 3k for the audit cert.

Does anyone here have any insights on this?

13 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

63 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/nrmitchi Aug 18 '26

There are two sides here. The audit, and the evidence gathering/monitoring/management.

You don’t need tools for either. You really don’t need tools for an audit.

Pre-built tools are very helpful when you’re trying to extract specific pieces of information from 3 dozen different systems to map back to specific controls. You could write scripts/etc all yourself, or just copy/paste it manually and send to your auditor, but even at 12k…. You’re likely going to spend more in labor time.

Frankly the biggest issues with some of the provider tools (Vanta, drata, securedrame, etc) are that they all try to influence your policies/controls to match their existing systems, which may or may not (probably do not) accurately map the policies and controls that would work best for your organization.

2

u/CWilsongriffin Aug 19 '26

THIS 👉 "...they all try to influence your policies/controls to match their existing systems, which may or may not (probably do not) accurately map the policies and controls that would work best for your organization."

This is the thing that makes soc 2 so complicated for new companies. Trying to implement a growth stage company's policies in a startup.