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 →CPCSC is Canada's defence supply-chain cyber certification program, built on ITSP.10.171 (Canada's profile of NIST SP 800-171) for vendors bidding on federal defence contracts.
CPCSC for Canadian startups · CPCSC cost in CAD · CPCSC Level 1 guide (canonical page)
Vendors and suppliers who want to bid on or stay eligible for Government of Canada defence contracts that require cyber certification.
The core of what CPCSC asks you to put in place.
A Level 1 self-assessment is achievable in a few weeks to a few months once gaps are remediated. Level 2 is a 6 to 12 month program: full gap assessment across 98 requirements, remediation, SSP and POA&M, a mock assessment, then the external assessment itself, which depends on certification-body scheduling ahead of the April 2027 wave.
We scope your environment, determine the required certification level, run the ITSP.10.171 gap assessment, author your SSP and POA&M, and either complete the Level 1 self-assessment with you or take you through full Level 2 readiness: remediation, evidence, a mock assessment against the objectives your certification body will use, and support through the assessment. Suppliers who also sell to the US Department of Defense get the same evidence mapped to CMMC Level 2.
See CPCSC Readiness, or compare estimated CPCSC cost in CAD. Based in Toronto and led by a published security researcher, we deliver across Canada and the US.
Reading about a framework only gets you so far. Our free compliance workspace takes you through every requirement one at a time, each explained in plain English with what an assessor will want to see, plus somewhere to attach the evidence and a readiness score that moves as you close gaps. CPCSC has more than one level, so pick the one you are certifying to. No credit card, no trial clock, nothing locked.
Or See what is in the Workspace first.
The workspace is free and stays free. Traztech makes money when someone wants help closing the gaps it finds, not from the tool.
The control library, the evidence, the policies and the readiness score all have to live somewhere. That is normally quoted as an annual subscription. Ours is free, and it is the same workspace we run engagements in.
| 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.
The Canadian Program for Cyber Security Certification, Canada's defence supply-chain cyber certification, built on ITSP.10.171, which is Canada's profile of NIST SP 800-171.
Vendors that want to bid on or remain eligible for Government of Canada defence contracts requiring cyber certification.
Both build on NIST SP 800-171. CPCSC is Canada's program and CMMC is the US DoD program, so work done for one substantially maps to the other. CPCSC Level 2 covers the 98 requirements of ITSP.10.171; CMMC Level 2 covers the 110 requirements of NIST SP 800-171 against 320 objectives. If you supply both governments, one SSP and evidence set can serve both.
Scoping, implementing the 13 ITSP.10.171 Level 1 requirements, documenting your controls, and attesting to a self-assessment through Canada Buys. No third-party assessor is involved, but the attestation still has to be evidence-backed.
All 98 ITSP.10.171 requirements across the 17 control families, verified by a certification body accredited by the Standards Council of Canada. You need a defined assessment boundary, a System Security Plan, a POA&M, evidence the assessor can sample, and control owners who can explain how each control runs. Level 2 requirements arrive in contracts from April 2027.
The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security profile of NIST SP 800-171, the control set underpinning CPCSC.
Book a free discovery call. We will tell you whether CPCSC fits, what it would take, and roughly what it would cost.
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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.
Before you go
I send a few short notes on CPCSC: what it actually asks for, what it costs, and the parts teams usually get wrong. Unsubscribe in one click, and replies reach me directly.
From Jacob Masse, founder of traztech. No spam, unsubscribe in one click.