Your first enterprise prospect asks for your SOC 2 report. You do not have one. Now you need to figure out what SOC 2 actually requires, how long it takes, and how much it costs. Here is a direct answer without the sales pitch.
Type I vs Type II
Type I is a point-in-time snapshot: your controls are designed correctly as of a specific date. Type II covers a period (usually 6 or 12 months) and proves your controls actually operated effectively over time. Enterprise buyers want Type II. Start there if you can wait for the observation period. If you need a report fast, get Type I first and then begin your Type II observation window immediately.
Trust Service Criteria: pick your scope
SOC 2 is built around five trust service criteria. You do not have to include all of them. Most startups begin with Security (CC series), which is required, and add others based on customer requirements:
- Security (required) — access control, system operations, change management, risk mitigation
- Availability — uptime commitments, disaster recovery, capacity planning. Include this if you have SLAs.
- Confidentiality — data classification, encryption, access restrictions on confidential information
- Processing Integrity — data processing is complete, valid, accurate, and timely. Relevant for financial or data processing services.
- Privacy — personal information handling. Often covered separately under privacy regulations, so most startups skip this in SOC 2.
Start with Security only. Add Availability if your customers depend on your uptime. Add Confidentiality if you handle sensitive data. You can always expand scope in future audit periods.
What auditors actually look for
Auditors test whether your controls exist and whether they worked during the observation period. The most common areas where startups fail:
- Access reviews. You need evidence of regular access reviews (quarterly is standard). If you cannot show who reviewed what and when, the control fails.
- Change management. Every production change needs a ticket, review, and approval trail. Deploying straight from a laptop to production with no PR review is a finding.
- Vulnerability management. You need to show that you scan for vulnerabilities on a defined schedule and remediate findings within your stated SLA. This is where SecTests comes in — continuous scans with timestamps and remediation tracking give you audit-ready evidence.
- Incident response. You need a written incident response plan and evidence that you tested it. A tabletop exercise with documented results is sufficient.
- Vendor management. If you use third-party services (you do), you need a vendor inventory with risk assessments. Start a spreadsheet with your critical vendors and their SOC 2 status.
Timeline and cost
Realistic timeline for a startup going from zero to Type II report:
- Months 1-2: Gap assessment, policy writing, control implementation
- Months 3-8: Type II observation period (minimum 6 months)
- Month 9: Audit fieldwork and report issuance
Total: roughly 9 months. Cost varies by auditor and scope, but budget $20,000 to $50,000 for the audit itself plus $5,000 to $15,000 for tooling (compliance platform, vulnerability scanning, access management).
Automate evidence collection from day one
The biggest time sink in SOC 2 is not the audit itself. It is collecting evidence. Screenshots, log exports, access review spreadsheets, vulnerability scan reports — all of it needs to be gathered, organized, and presented to your auditor.
Automate this from the start. Connect your infrastructure (AWS, GCP, Azure) to a compliance platform. Set up continuous vulnerability scanning with SecTests and configure automatic evidence exports. Every scan result, every remediation timestamp, every configuration check becomes an audit artifact without manual effort.
SOC 2 is not as complicated as the compliance industry makes it sound. Define your scope, implement basic controls, automate evidence collection, and hire an auditor. The hardest part is the discipline of maintaining controls over the observation period. Tooling that runs continuously makes that part straightforward.