A fixed-price gap analysis, remediation through to your audit, and upkeep after it. All in a workspace you keep.
All compliance →Led by a published security researcher with five CVEs. One standard report, letters for your buyers, and retests of your fixes.
All security →To the people you sell to, raise from or answer to.
All industries →Original research, free tools, and plain-language guides on security and compliance, from a published security researcher.
Read the blog →IR retainer for Hamilton founders and operators. Insurers, customers, and regulators all want to know who answers the phone at 2 AM. A retainer gives you a named team, agreed response times, and a contract you can cite, for a fraction of building an internal SOC.
Hamilton and the Golden Horseshoe skew towards manufacturing, logistics and industrial services rather than pure software, so compliance is usually triggered by a customer contract or an insurer rather than by an enterprise SaaS deal.
That changes the deliverable. A cyber insurer wants evidence of specific controls; an enterprise customer wants a report. Establishing which one is driving the requirement before scoping saves buying the wrong thing.
The service itself is the same everywhere. Fixed scope, fixed price, and the same team. What changes by region is which requirement binds first and who is asking. The full detail is on the incident response retainer page, and prices are on the pricing page.
Hamilton has quietly become a serious tech and health-innovation centre, anchored by McMaster, an affordable cost base pulling founders west from Toronto, and strengths in medtech, advanced manufacturing, and B2B SaaS. It sits inside the Toronto to Waterloo corridor without Toronto rents.
Hamilton is a 45-minute drive from our Toronto base, so we run genuinely hybrid engagements here. Same team, same bench, in-person when it helps, and none of the “remote support” treatment national firms give the city.
Insurers, customers, and regulators all want to know who answers the phone at 2 AM. A retainer gives you a named team, agreed response times, and a contract you can cite, for a fraction of building an internal SOC.
For the full service detail, see the Incident Response Retainer page. For fixed-price productized engagements, see pricing.
We do. traztech is a Canadian security and compliance firm working with startups and SMEs on Incident Response Retainer, led by a published security researcher with five disclosed CVEs. Engagements are fixed scope with published pricing, and the first call is free. Where an independent assessor, auditor or certification body is required, that is a separate firm from the one doing your readiness work. We will tell you plainly which parts we can and cannot sign.
Hamilton and the Golden Horseshoe skew towards manufacturing, logistics and industrial services rather than pure software, so compliance is usually triggered by a customer contract or an insurer rather than by an enterprise SaaS deal. That changes the deliverable. A cyber insurer wants evidence of specific controls; an enterprise customer wants a report. Establishing which one is driving the requirement before scoping saves buying the wrong thing.
No. We are based in Toronto and work with companies across Canada and the United States. Readiness work is largely remote by nature: evidence, policies and control design do not require anybody in the room. Where physical and environmental controls are in scope, for example a data centre or an office in the audit boundary, we attend on site. We have run a dual-framework programme across three physical sites, so that scope is familiar rather than an exception.
Our pricing is fixed and published rather than quoted per city, because the work does not change with the postcode. What moves the number is scope: how many systems and sites are in the boundary, how much already exists, and how many frameworks you are running at once. The audit or assessment fee is separate and is paid to the independent firm that performs it. Every price we charge is on our pricing page.
It depends on the framework and on how much of the programme already exists. SOC 2 Type I commonly takes a few months from start to report, and a Type II adds a 3, 6 or 12 month observation window, because the auditor has to watch the controls operate. ISO 27001 certification commonly takes several months, including the Stage 1 and Stage 2 audits. What drives it is the gaps found, the observation period and the auditor’s or certification body’s schedule. We will give you a realistic date on the first call rather than the one you want to hear.
Yes, and we frequently do. We manage the relationship, handle evidence requests and represent you through fieldwork. Where you have not chosen one, we run the selection: setting out a documented readiness position before firms quote tends to bring the quotes down, and comparing several firms on identical scope shows how far apart they can be.
Book a free 30-minute discovery call. We’ll tell you whether this engagement fits, what it would cost, and when we could start.
Book a callEvery readiness programme needs a control library, an evidence register, policies and a score for the board. Being quoted five figures a year for that is normal. Paying it is not.
| 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 | A documented readiness position the audit firm can scope and price against | Nothing. The audit firm prices your readiness, not your tooling |
Platform pricing is a publicly reported range, since none of them publish a number. The fuller comparison, including when a paid platform is the better buy, is on the Workspace page.
Free PDFs, no card
SOC 2 readiness, ISO 27001 gaps, incident response and vendor security, as PDFs you can print or forward. Free, no card.
From Jacob Masse, principal of traztech: the files by email, then a few short notes over the next month. No spam, unsubscribe in one click.
Track record
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.
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 with zero exceptions.