Productizing SOC 2 Compliance
Christina Cacioppo, CEO of Vanta, on the value of SOC 2 compliance for startups
Standardizing SOC 2 turned compliance from bespoke project work into a repeatable software workflow. Once Vanta reduced dozens of audit questions into a common checklist, it could connect to systems like AWS, Google Workspace, GitHub, HR tools, and employee devices, test controls automatically, and show both the company and the auditor the same live evidence. That is what made a slow consulting process look like a SaaS product instead of an annual fire drill.
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The old workflow was manual and hard to productize. Founders hunted through long control lists, gathered screenshots, sat with auditors in person, and repeated the process every year. Standardization mattered because software needs a stable set of checks before code can replace labor.
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Competitors reached the same conclusion. Secureframe and Laika also built around shared controls, API integrations, and prescriptive setup flows. The winning pattern in this category was not inventing a new audit standard, it was turning overlapping requirements across frameworks into reusable software components.
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That shift changed the market shape. What used to be a $50K to $100K consulting style project for later stage startups became accessible much earlier, often for companies with 10 to 20 employees, because the software cut time, reduced audit prep work, and made annual recertification easier to manage.
The next step is using the same standardized control layer for more than SOC 2. Once a platform can continuously test who has access, whether devices are encrypted, and whether vendors are approved, it can map that evidence into more frameworks and adjacent security products. That is how compliance software expands from audit prep into a broader trust and security system.