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, CPCSC, 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 →The Canadian Program for Cyber Security Certification (CPCSC) is Canada’s requirement for suppliers to the Department of National Defence. Level 1 is a self-assessment against 13 requirements drawn from ITSP.10.171, Canada’s profile of the NIST SP 800-171 controls. Level 2 covers all 98 requirements and is verified by an accredited certification body from April 2027. We run whichever tier your contracts call for, and if you also supply the US Department of Defense, the same program covers CMMC Level 2.
Comparing providers? See how CPCSC providers in Canada compare.
At Level 1 you complete a defensible self-assessment against the 13 requirements, with the evidence to back it and the gaps closed. At Level 2 you walk into an accredited certification body’s assessment with a defined boundary, a System Security Plan, working evidence, and a team that has already been through a mock version of the same interviews. Either way a defence procurement requirement stops standing between you and the contract. Because CPCSC builds on ITSP.10.171, the same work carries into the US CMMC program if you supply both governments.
The Canadian Program for Cyber Security Certification is a Government of Canada program that sets cybersecurity requirements for defence suppliers. It is built on ITSP.10.171, Canada’s profile of the NIST SP 800-171 controls, and is broadly analogous to the US CMMC program.
Level 1 is a self-assessment against 13 requirements aimed at protecting non-classified information. It is the entry tier of CPCSC and does not require a third-party assessor, but the self-assessment still needs to be accurate and evidence-backed.
Level 2 covers all 98 ITSP.10.171 requirements across the 17 control families and is verified by a certification body accredited by the Standards Council of Canada rather than self-attested. You need a defined assessment boundary, a System Security Plan, a Plan of Action and Milestones, sampleable evidence, and control owners who can explain how things work. Level 2 requirements are expected in contracts from April 2027, and readiness typically takes 6 to 12 months.
Yes. CMMC Level 2 covers the 110 requirements of NIST SP 800-171, assessed by a C3PAO against 320 objectives with a score posted in SPRS. ITSP.10.171 is Canada’s profile of the same standard, so for suppliers selling to both governments we build one System Security Plan and one evidence set mapped to both programs instead of running two projects.
Both programs are built on the NIST SP 800-171 control set, so the underlying safeguards overlap heavily. The differences are jurisdiction, the document you cite, who assesses you, and where you file: Canada Buys for CPCSC, SPRS for CMMC. If you supply both markets, doing one gives you a strong head start on the other, and we scope accordingly.
No. Level 1 is a self-assessment, so you attest to meeting the 13 requirements yourself. We do the assessment work with you and make sure it is defensible, but you remain the one attesting. Level 2 is different: the assessment is led by an accredited certification body, and we prepare you for it rather than issue the certificate.
No. Level 2 certificates come only from certification bodies accredited by the Standards Council of Canada, and CMMC Level 2 certificates come from an authorized C3PAO. Readiness and certification are deliberately separate roles. We do the readiness, help you select and schedule an assessor, and sit with you through the assessment.
The price above covers the work. It also covers where the work lives, which most buyers are quoted separately as an annual platform subscription.
| 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.
Book a free 30-minute call. We’ll tell you whether it fits, what it costs, and when we can start.
Book a callNot ready to scope this yet? Open a free Workspace and score yourself against the framework first. It is the same register we work from during an engagement, so nothing you do there gets thrown away.
See what the Workspace does →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.