Testing and defence led by a published security researcher with five CVEs, including a CVSS 9.1 Mirai botnet kill-switch.
All security →SOC 2, ISO, and the Canadian privacy stack, run end to end with an independent auditor.
All frameworks →Original research, free tools, and plain-language guides on security and compliance, from a published security researcher.
Read the blog →Plenty of teams try to handle SOC 2 and security in-house with no security hire, usually a founder or a senior engineer doing it on nights and weekends. Sometimes that works. More often it stalls deals, burns your best engineer, and produces a program nobody really owns. Here is the honest comparison.
We would rather tell you the truth than win a bad-fit client. Here is when the alternative is genuinely the better choice.
If that is you, do it yourself, and our free tools and library can help. The trap is the team that does not have that experience and discovers the real cost halfway through.
| traztech | In-house / DIY | |
|---|---|---|
| Out-of-pocket cost | Roughly from $3K per month | Tool subscriptions, plus the hidden cost of your team's time |
| Real cost | Predictable, scoped, and someone else owns it | Founder and senior-engineer hours pulled off revenue and product |
| Time to value | SOC 2 readiness on a 75-day track | Often stretches for many months around other priorities |
| Who answers the auditor | We sit in the audit and answer the controls | A founder or engineer learning the controls on the fly |
| Depth | Researcher-grade program with offensive testing | Limited by whatever the team already knows |
| When deals stall on security | We handle questionnaires and reviews | Your team drops everything to respond |
Every number below comes from an engagement record and links to the full case study.
76 controls, a five-layer change-approval flow, a 60-plus asset audit, and a full policy set, on a team of 15. It passed with zero exceptions. The case study is written as a walkthrough precisely so you can judge whether you have the capacity for it.
Read the full walkthroughFour firms priced identical scope and the highest number was 2.1 times the lowest. Separately, a documented readiness position took $11,000 off a single quote. Neither of those is visible to a first-time buyer comparing proposals.
Why the quotes differedA client with a five-figure platform subscription budgeted ran the programme in our workspace instead and kept the evidence. If you are going the in-house route, that is the cheaper starting point.
What they did insteadMore at all case studies.
Every hour your best engineer spends learning SOC 2 controls is an hour off the roadmap. We take the program so the team keeps shipping.
Enterprise security questionnaires and customer reviews are a common deal blocker. We own the answers, so a security review does not freeze your pipeline.
DIY security usually means nobody truly owns the program and it drifts. With traztech there is a named, accountable operator who keeps it current.
You get a published security researcher and offensive testing through a specialist partner, not a program built from blog posts and template policies.
You can, and some teams do. The honest question is whether the people who would do it have done it before and have the time. If yes, our free tools and library will help. If it is a founder or engineer learning it from scratch on nights and weekends, the hidden cost in time and stalled deals usually exceeds the fee.
The visible cost is the tool subscription. The hidden cost is founder and senior-engineer time, often hundreds of hours, pulled off revenue and product. Add the deals that stall while a security questionnaire sits unanswered, and DIY is frequently the more expensive path.
It varies widely, but in-house efforts with no prior experience commonly stretch across many months because the work competes with everything else. Our readiness track runs in 75 days because it is someone's actual job, not a side project.
Good, that is not wasted. We pick up where you are, audit what exists, close the gaps, and take ownership from there. You keep the work that is solid and stop carrying the parts that are stalling you.
Yes. We publish free tools, calculators, and a library specifically so early teams can make progress on their own. When the DIY approach starts costing more than it saves, we are here, and we will be honest about where that line is for you.
Two things: the security questionnaire that stalls a six-figure deal because nobody can answer it confidently, and the founder or lead engineer who quietly loses weeks to compliance work. Those are the moments most DIY teams reach out.
traztech Workspace covers the same self-assessment ground for nothing: every control in plain English, an evidence register, policy templates, a risk register, and vendor questionnaires. It does not do continuous monitoring or auto-collection, and we say so plainly. If all you need right now is to understand the scope, you do not need a subscription for that.
No credit card, no trial clock, no locked features. We make money when someone wants help closing the gaps, not from the Workspace.
| traztech Workspace | Other GRC platforms | |
|---|---|---|
| Licence cost | $0. Free forever, no card, no paid tier | $7,500 to $50,000 a year, on an annual contract |
| Control library, evidence register, policy templates, risk register, vendor questionnaires, readiness scoring | Included | Included |
| What it costs inside an engagement with us | $0. You need a workspace either way | Unchanged. The subscription sits on top of the fee |
| What it does to your audit quote | $11,000 off a five-figure quote on one engagement, for a documented readiness position | Nothing. The audit firm prices your readiness, not your tooling |
Pricing in the right column is what compliance automation platforms are publicly reported to charge; none of them publish a number, so treat it as a range rather than a quote. The $11,000 came off the audit firm's own number once the readiness position was documented (the engagement). Where a paid platform is the better buy, and the fuller comparison, is on the Workspace page.
Hand the security and compliance program to a published researcher, and stop paying for it in founder and engineer hours.
Ready to move? Start with SOC 2 readiness in 75 days or see our pricing.
Book a strategy callWeighing your options?
Comparing approaches is the right move. Jacob sends a few short, candid notes on choosing the right security and compliance path for your stage, no fluff. Reply anytime; it reaches him directly.
From Jacob Masse, principal of traztech. No spam, unsubscribe in one click.
Track record
We are deliberately not a large firm, and we would rather show you the work than a wall of logos. Here is what is behind the advice.
Five published CVEs. CVE-2024-45163 (CVSS 9.1) is a flaw in the Mirai botnet itself, which gave defenders a way to shut down attacker infrastructure. CVE-2026-42626 takes HP ENVY 5000 printers offline from any unauthenticated device on the same network.
The printer is the one that matters on a compliance page: an asset nobody counts as a computer, on a flat network, downed by a device that never had to log in. Auditors ask how controls fail. We have found out first-hand.
At Humera, a venture-backed US security company, Jacob built the compliance programme in-house from nothing: no report, no policies, no documented controls. It ended in a Type II attestation across 76 controls with zero exceptions, on a team of 15.
The platform held 99.9% uptime throughout, which is the part most readiness projects get wrong: controls are easy to design and hard to retrofit onto a system people already depend on.
For a Waterloo data centre operator we ran SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001:2022 together rather than one after the other, across a production campus, an AI compute platform and a self-hosted collaboration stack. Scoped so further Ontario and Quebec sites enter as they reach production. Findings delivered and remediated.
For an Ontario medtech company putting an AI clinical assistant in front of practitioners, we ran the gap analysis and built the evidence programme behind their SOC 2.