Building trust is the key to gain and retain customers in the modern competitive era. If you are a SaaS organization and scaling up is your primary goal, developing relationships anchored in trust with prospects is almost mission-critical.

SOC 2 plays an important role in establishing and maintaining this trust with customers from an information security perspective. However, the path to getting compliant can be too expensive both in terms of time and capital, especially for startups.

However, compliance automation tools like Scrut can make this process seamless and hassle-free. This blog will cover several key questions like:

What is automated SOC 2 compliance?

A SOC 2 report is a critical asset for any organization, even more so for growing SaaS organizations. However, SOC 2 audits are cumbersome at best, and hard on the coffers.

Previously, to conduct a SOC 2 audit, the singular option was to find a CPA firm and embark upon an unwieldy audit process with significant data collection requirements — all done manually. This would require substantial time investment from the engineering and other teams, time better spent focussing on product development and business operations. SOC 2 audits typically involves countless hours with an auditor ahead of the audit; in-depth interviews between auditors and employees, and manual scraping of systems for relevant evidence collection. Post this pre-audit, organizations then have to spend significant time implementing recommended fixes to the security systems to prepare for the audit itself. And this, in turn, includes more interviews and evidence collection. Only after this, the auditor would document the lengthy process, and, provide the SOC 2 attestation report.

A SOC 2 automation reduces most of the hassle in the SOC 2 process, and eliminates hundred of hours required to prepare and undergo a SOC 2 audit. A good SOC 2 compliance automation software helps in identifying gaps that need to be fixed for compliance and automates monitoring and evidence collection against the SOC 2 compliance posture over time, instantly alerting you when the infosec posture is at risk.

A SOC 2 automation software streamlines the compliance process through:

• One-stop control dashboard and risk posture across the organization
• Instant visibility into your compliance activity
• Automated real-time compliance audits across the cloud infrastructure for gap identification and correction
• Automated collection of evidence artefacts
• Single window for all compliance-related assets, including policies, evidence, and tasks

Traditionally, organizations had to update lengthy spreadsheets and attach a plethora of screenshots as proof during their audit. An automated SOC 2 compliance software can simply be plugged into your existing tech infrastructure to retrieve relevant information.

Why do you need a SOC 2 compliance automation software?

Beside assuring that you stay SOC 2 compliant 24*7, here’s why you should go for SOC 2 automation software:

You cannot invest the hours – Preparing sheets, analyzing data, organizing screenshots and evidence, and tracking vendors, assets, and exchanges will be too much to handle when done manually.

You need the report ‘yesterday’ – Any client or prospect can ask you for compliance reports anytime. Without a suitable compliance automation tool, the SOC 2 audit can take months to complete.

You cannot afford to distract resources from their core responsibilities – A dedicated team for SOC 2 compliance can be expensive, and almost unaffordable for a growing startup. At the same time, especially if you are an early-stage startup, you can’t afford to keep employees out of core work for so long.

Protecting customer data matters to you – A compliance automation tool helps establish and maintain a robust infosec posture with real-time monitoring of the cloud infrastructure.

You want to avoid human error – As goes with any automation, a SOC 2 compliance automation tool will automate all evidence collection, cloud gap assessments and potential risks.

What are the key considerations for choosing a SOC 2 compliance automation software?

In the last few years, we have witnessed immense growth in the automated compliance sector. Here are a few factors you should consider while evaluating the right SOC automation software for your enterprise:

• Does the software have enough integrations to fulfill your requirements and save your and your team’s time?
• Does the software support your relevant (current and expected future) frameworks?
• How strong is the customer support provided by the SOC 2 automation software company? Do they also help you through the audit?
• Are the pricing and packages entirely transparent and flexible? Do they have any policy for extra charges apart from the plan that you buy?

Scrut’s automated SOC 2 compliance platform is one of the fastest in the industry. Our platform makes it extremely convenient and easy for you to maintain all your compliance requirements at your fingertips. We help our customers get ready for SOC 2 in just two weeks.

Scrut Automation is an innovative and radically simple governance, risk, and compliance automation platform for growing startups and mid-market enterprises. With Scrut, Compliance teams can reduce ~70% of their manual effort in continuously maintaining compliance towards SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and CCPA. Schedule your demo today to see how it works.