When a venture-backed security startup came to us, they had a problem that kills more enterprise deals than any feature gap: no SOC 2 report. Their prospects were enterprise buyers whose procurement teams would not sign without one, and their next funding conversation hinged on proving they could sell upmarket. They needed SOC 2 Type II, not just Type I, and they needed it done right the first time.
The client name is withheld at their request. Everything below describes the actual engagement.
The starting point
The company was a team of roughly 15, shipping a production platform that served millions of requests with no formal compliance program in place. There were good engineers and good instincts, but the controls a SOC 2 Type II auditor looks for were either undocumented, inconsistent, or missing. Type II is harder than Type I because the auditor does not just check that a control exists on one day; they observe that it operated consistently across a multi-month window. You cannot fake an observation period. You have to actually run the program.
What we implemented
We owned the program end to end, from scoping the Trust Services Criteria through to coordinating the audit. The work spanned 76 controls across access management, change management, vendor risk, incident response, and business continuity.
- A 60+ asset security audit. We inventoried every production asset, cloud account, repository, and third-party system in scope, then mapped each to the controls and evidence the auditor would request.
- A five-layer pull-request approval flow. Change management is where most startups fail Type II. We built a multi-stage PR approval process so that no code reached production without review, approval, and an auditable trail, without slowing the team to a crawl.
- Policy and evidence infrastructure. We wrote the policies, stood up the evidence repository, and wired up a compliance automation platform so evidence was collected continuously instead of scrambled together the week before the audit.
- Controls across the lifecycle. SSO and least-privilege access reviews, endpoint controls, onboarding and offboarding, vendor reviews, a documented and tested incident response plan, and a business continuity plan, all operating on a real cadence.
The outcome
The company passed its SOC 2 Type II audit. Through the engagement the platform held 99.9% uptime while serving millions of daily requests, and the controls we put in place were not a one-time checkbox; they became the way the team works. With the report in hand, the security questionnaire that used to stall every enterprise deal became a one-line answer and a PDF attachment.
Why this is the work we sell
This is not theoretical. SOC 2 Type II across 76 controls, a hardened change-management flow, and a full asset audit is exactly what we deliver through our Fractional CISO and Security engagements, and it is the backbone of our productized SOC 2 in 75 Days offering. If your next enterprise deal is blocked on a security review, that is the conversation we have every week.
Book a strategy call and we will tell you honestly how far you are from audit-ready.