SOC 2 Readiness & Audit Support
More and more companies now demand a SOC 2 report from their vendors. If your customers are asking and you don’t have one, we run the whole path — gap assessment, remediation, evidence, and the audit itself.
A SOC 2 report is how customers verify you
Technology and service providers are expected to be SOC 2 compliant, particularly when they store customer data on premises or in the cloud. The report gives prospective and current customers independent assurance about the security, availability, confidentiality, and privacy of the information systems you run on their behalf.
It covers the security, availability, processing integrity, and confidentiality of customer data — and it demonstrates adherence to strict information security policies and procedures, not just the intent to have them.
Type I or Type II?
Type I attests that your controls are suitably designed at a point in time. It’s faster, and it’s often enough to unblock a deal that’s waiting on you right now.
Type II attests that those controls operated effectively across a period — typically three to twelve months. It’s what most enterprise buyers eventually want.
We recently completed our SOC 2 audit and assessment with C'S|3, a project that initially presented itself as a resource-intensive, almost unattainable task that would go on forever. But with the hand holding, expertise, and guidance from the team at C'S|3, we proceeded through this process at a very organized and controlled pace which resulted in our certification for being SOC 2 compliant.
Many thanks to the C'S|3 team for leading the project and taking us through this process. Without their leadership, we would never have been able to complete this alone, and in the timeframe that it took to complete the project.
Our next project is HIPAA compliance, and we are looking to the C'S|3 Team to help us through that certification as well.
Four steps, and you always know which one you’re in
An account lead is assigned to you and stays assigned. From the kick-off meeting through the auditor’s final report, it’s the same people answering your questions.
1. A 30-minute call — no charge
You tell us which framework is being asked of you, who’s asking, and what’s already in place. We tell you honestly what the gap looks like and roughly what it takes to close it.
- A straight answer on scope, effort, and timeline
- Whether Type I or Type II fits what your customer actually needs
- An honest read on whether we’re the right firm for it
2. Gap assessment
We audit your existing controls against the Trust Services Criteria and hand you a prioritized gap list — what blocks certification outright, what will show up as a finding, and what can safely wait until next cycle.
The assessment covers risks in four phases, the same structure we use across our information security work:
- Administrative controls — the “human” part of information security, and the controls used to govern every other part of it
- Physical controls — the controls you can often touch, providing physical security for your information assets
- Internal technical controls — technical controls operating inside your gateways and firewalls
- External technical controls — the controls facing everything outside that boundary
3. Remediation roadmap
Actionable items with owners and dates, sequenced so the things blocking your audit date get done first. We work alongside your team rather than over them — your people have to operate these controls long after we’ve gone, so they need to have built them.
Where you don’t have the internal capacity, our managed IT and security practice can operate the control for you rather than leaving a gap in the roadmap.
4. Audit & certification — and the year after
We prepare the evidence, act as liaison with your auditor, and sit in the room for the audit. Certification isn’t a finish line — SOC 2 is an annual cycle, and we stay on for it so the second year isn’t as hard as the first.
Most of the work counts twice
Controls you build for SOC 2 overlap heavily with the other frameworks likely to land on you next. We map requirements across all of them, so the second certification costs a fraction of the first — which is why HIPAA is so often a client’s next engagement with us.
Frameworks we map to
- SOC 2
- HIPAA
- HITRUST
- ISO 27000-1
- NIST CSF
- FFIEC
- NCUA
- GLBA
- FISMA
- ISO 31000
What you get
- A prioritized gap assessment against the Trust Services Criteria
- A remediation roadmap with owners and dates
- Policies and procedures written to be operated, not filed
- Evidence collected and organized for the auditor
- A named lead who stays with you the whole way
- Support through the audit and into the annual cycle
What we need from you
- An internal owner with enough authority to unblock decisions
- Access to your systems, vendors, and existing documentation
- Honesty about what isn’t in place — we’d rather find it than the auditor
- Your audit deadline, if a customer has already set one
Find out where you stand
Send us the request your customer sent you. In 30 minutes we’ll tell you what closing the gap actually involves — and whether you need Type I or Type II to unblock the deal.
- A straight answer on scope and timeline, not a sales pitch
- No charge, and no obligation to engage us
- You talk to a senior consultant, not an account rep
- Prefer to talk now? 719-204-3101