TL, DR :
| SOC 2 automation streamlines audit prep by automating evidence collection, continuous control monitoring, and policy management, replacing spreadsheet tracking and cutting audit readiness from months to weeks. |
| The software automates repetitive tasks like mapping Trust Service Criteria to controls, deploying security controls, and generating reports, integrating with your tech stack for full visibility into security posture. |
| Automated evidence collection gathers system logs, access logs, and configuration changes and maps them to SOC 2 criteria, eliminating manual gathering that can take 300+ hours during initial audit prep. |
| Continuous monitoring alerts your team in real time when controls fail or drift, shifting SOC 2 from a once-a-year scramble to a year-round security program. |
| Key features to look for include automated checks across thousands of assets, audit-friendly evidence collection, role-based access controls, expert support, and a real-time compliance health dashboard. |
SOC 2 automation helps streamline the preparation for the audit process by assisting with scoping your report, outlining necessary actions, and running assessments to ensure you’re ready for the audit.
While not everything in a SOC 2 audit can be automated, automating what you can is a huge time-saver and cost-cutter for your business. Compliance automation.
Essentialy, it eliminates the need for doing things from scratch, such as manually mapping the relevant SOC 2 criteria or validating controls. It is a quick and confident approach to compliance that helps you build a responsive compliance program.
Read on to understand what SOC 2 automation is and how you can achieve it with the right software.
What is SOC 2 compliance automation?
SOC 2 compliance automation uses technology to streamline crucial parts of the SOC 2 attestation. Continuous monitoring of controls, management of policies, and evidence collection are some examples that can be automated with SOC 2 compliance automation.Moreover, it gives you control over your security program and 360-degree visibility into your compliance and security posture.
Why do you need SOC 2 automation?
Organizations need SOC 2 automation to streamline SOC 2 implementation, continuously monitor controls, optimize resources, maintain exhaustive documentation, and ensure scalability. SOC 2 automation expedites audit readiness and helps achieve attestation faster. Fill in your details in the block to get a complete list of SOC 2 controls.
Download your SOC 2 controls list
As a cloud-hosted business, you have several information assets, such as servers, S3 buckets, load balancers, laptops, and more. And if you list all the assets where information is stored, including your vendors, the list could run into thousands! SOC 2 Compliance requires you to secure all your information assets per the risks identified for each of them.
For instance, if it’s an S3 bucket, you must ensure it isn’t publicly accessible. Or, if it’s an EC2 instance, you need to protect its Secure Socket Shell (SSH) access and keep the database and hard disk encrypted.
In essence, every asset type needs a different kind of security check. Now imagine running and monitoring these checks on thousands of assets every day. Trust us; it will soon snowball into a security nightmare!
What can be automated for SOC 2?
A SOC 2 compliance automation software can eliminate the need to work hundreds of hours. Following are the list of processes that can be automated for SOC 2 compliance framework:
- Automated mapping of Trust Service Criteria to relevant controls
- Creation and distribution of policies org-wide
- Risk identification and assessments, along with automated scoring and prioritization
- Deployment of controls such as access provisioning, de-provisioning, encryption, etc.
- Continuous monitoring of internal controls to raise alerts for any failures
- Automated evidence collection and mapping to criteria
- Monitoring of third-party risks
- Automated generation of compliance reports
- Facilitating change management with automated tracking of changes and approval of requests
- Helping track vulnerabilities and incidents till closure by integrating with third-party tools
What SOC 2 automation can and cannot prove
SOC 2 automation can collect evidence, monitor control status, flag gaps, and reduce the manual work needed to prepare for an audit. But it does not replace the judgment required to design, operate, and explain your controls.
Auditors still need to understand why a control exists, how it fits your system, whether it operated during the audit period, and how exceptions were reviewed. Automation gives your team a stronger evidence trail, but your team remains responsible for control ownership, risk acceptance, system descriptions, vendor scope, and final sign-offs.
Use automation to make the audit easier to prove, not to treat compliance as fully hands-off.
Steps to automate SOC 2 with Sprinto
Sprinto is a compliance automation platform that can help you automate SOC 2 and ensure your systems are continuously compliant with the framework.
You can automate SOC 2 with Sprinto in 4 easy steps:
- Integrate Sprinto with your tech stack and map all entities that impact data security
- Conduct an integrated risk assessment to understand your risk status and use the risk library to identify and implement missing security controls
- Activate automated checks to continuously monitor controls and minimize compliance instances of non-compliance
- Leverage Sprinto to collect compliance evidence in an audit-friendly manner and launch an external audit with an auditor from the Sprinto’s network to complete audits fast
The main dashboard gives you a quick snapshot of the real-time view of controls and enables you to take actions quickly while automated workflows help you streamline repetitive tasks.
Capabilities like in-built policy templates, training modules, role-based access controls and integration with 200+ cloud applications help you get audit-ready in weeks.
Take the case of ZapScale, a customer success platform, which wanted to avoid the manual audit grind its co-founder had experienced before. With Sprinto, ZapScale got a clear compliance task map, automated control monitoring, and evidence collection across its SOC 2 scope. The team still owned the decisions and inputs, but Sprinto reduced the manual effort of checking systems, pulling evidence, and staying on top of remediation.
ZapScale became SOC 2 Type 1 audit-ready in 4 weeks and completed its SOC 2 Type 2 audit in 5 months. The outcome was not just a report. It gave the team more confidence in enterprise conversations where buyers asked hard questions about data security, controls, and evidence.
Bratish Goswami, Co-founder and CTO at ZapScale, noted, “Sprinto is my trusted assistant – the map of what needs to be done to keep us compliant is extremely clear. It’s money well spent.”
Before connecting a SOC 2 automation platform to your cloud, HRIS, code repository, device management, identity provider, or ticketing tools, confirm what access each integration needs and what evidence it will collect.
Ask these questions during the setup:
- Does the integration need read-only, scoped admin, or full admin access?
- Will it collect logs, user lists, configurations, tickets, policy records, vulnerability data, or training records?
- Are only in-scope systems, environments, repositories, employees, contractors, and service accounts included?
- Can you upload evidence for tools that are not integrated?
- Can imported or manually uploaded evidence be mapped to your custom controls and SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria?
- Does each evidence record show when it was collected and whether it falls inside the Type 2 observation period?
- Who reviews failed checks, exceptions, and evidence gaps before the auditor sees them?
SOC 2 Manual vs Automated: What’s the Difference?
As cloud-hosted companies, you would have an intrinsic understanding of the benefits of automation. Aside from the generic advantages, here are the key factors that swing the deal in favor of automation.
The opportunity cost of time and employee productivity
It is possible and common for organizations to use a DIY approach or hire a consultant to get their SOC 2. Many organizations have taken up the task and succeeded in it too. However, it would help if you asked whether you have the time and resources to allocate toward getting SOC 2 audit ready in-house.
Taking up the manual approach to SOC 2 requires your key engineering hires and the CTO to spend considerable time (300+ hours) setting up the processes and documentation initially.
And later, after a successful attestation, they will need to monitor and maintain compliance and repeat the entire process before the SOC 2 attestation expires (a year later).
Automation solves this problem smartly. It only needs an initial investment of time and effort during the implementation of SOC 2 compliance automation software. However, subsequent audits and monitoring are relatively simple.
Sprinto’s SOC 2 automation software further reduces your team’s investment in terms of time by allocating a dedicated compliance expert who walks you through the entire process.
Having a dedicated compliance expert’s support allows your infosec team to eliminate the time they would have otherwise spent attending self-learning tutorials on software implementation.
Read about how HackerRank streamlined security due diligence and regained 20% of engineering time with Sprinto.
A faster and more confident approach to SOC 2
A manual approach to SOC 2 (whether you do it yourself or hire an external consultant) easily takes up 3-4 months in audit preparation. Much time gets spent understanding the SOC 2 requirements, implementing them, and undergoing rounds of SOC 2 self-assessments and SOC 2 readiness assessments.
Even after all this, you wouldn’t walk into an audit as confidently as when using automation software.
Most SOC 2 compliance automation softwares offer health dashboards that give you an objective real-time overview of compliance.
Once you have closed the major control gaps and your dashboard shows strong audit readiness, you can enter the audit with clearer evidence and fewer surprises. The final outcome still depends on auditor testing, evidence quality, scope accuracy, and how well your team explains exceptions or control decisions.
What’s more, when you automate SOC 2, your audit prep time reduces considerably. Depending on the type and size of your organization, the scope and type of SOC 2 report and your security readiness, it would roughly take you anywhere from a couple of weeks to a maximum of a month to get your SOC 2 ducks in a row if you work with Sprinto.
Here’s how PreSkale completed SOC 2 audit in under 30 days using Sprinto’s compliance automation software.
Cost of compliance
The cost of SOC 2 compliance with traditional compliance systems can range between $50000-$200000 and with modern day tools can range between $7000-$50000 depending on various factors.
Aside from the auditor’s fee, the SOC 2 compliance cost depends on the type of attestation needed, the size of your organization, the scope of the audit, and the cost of security tools needed.
Sprinto’s compliance automation platform is priced at a starting price of only $8000 (depending on the organization’s size).
The evidence collection
The manual route requires you to maintain pieces of evidence to demonstrate compliance, such as screenshots, policy documents, and whatnot. Therefore, the back-and-forth email threads with the auditor tend to be long and cumbersome.
It also requires you to establish a secure way to share the required evidence with the auditor.
SOC 2 automation softwares integrate with your systems and infrastructure and simplify evidence collection and audits. So, instead of sifting through folders looking for specific evidence, your auditor gets presented with pieces of evidence that are bagged and tagged – in a neatly organized manner.
Pro Tip: Look for a SOC 2 automation software that supports automatic and manual evidence collection to accommodate edge cases.
Before submitting automated or manual evidence, check that it includes:
- The system or application name
- The control or criterion it supports
- The audit period or sample date
- Full-screen screenshots where needed, including URL and timestamp
- Clear owner and reviewer details
- Production-system scope, such as the correct GitHub repositories or cloud accounts
- Exception notes and remediation status
- Vendor or subservice-organization context when third parties support the control
- A short explanation when the evidence is manual, sampled, or uploaded outside an integration
Continuous monitoring
As we mentioned, SOC 2 automation software continuously monitors your compliance status and alerts you in cases of lapses, delays and non-compliance.
For instance, most softwares automatically alert you if an employee has yet to be offboarded (in terms of revoking access) or if a new employee still needs to undergo the staff security training program.
Real-time monitoring helps you know your compliance status at any point in time. And take quick remedial actions when needed. In contrast, the manual route isn’t continuous and relies on spot checks to monitor your compliance status.
Continuous monitoring should also help teams prioritize vulnerabilities by real risk, not just by severity score. For SOC 2, this makes vulnerability management evidence more defensible because it shows how the team decides what to fix first.
A useful automation workflow should consider:
- Whether the affected asset is internet-facing
- Whether the vulnerability appears in CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
- Whether exploitation can be automated
- The technical impact of the vulnerability
- The business criticality of the affected system
- Whether mitigation, remediation, or risk acceptance was approved and documented
Vendor risk management
Most SOC 2 compliance automation softwares offer robust vendor risk management features, allowing you to manage vendor agreements and attestations. The manual approach, in comparison, is long-winded and less robust.
Also check out: SOC 2 guide for startups
Must-have SOC 2 automation software features
There are plenty of SOC 2 automation tools available in the market. How do you pick one that best fits your current and future needs?
Here’s a list of the must-have SOC 2 compliance automation software features.
- Supports current and future framework requirements – not just one but multiple frameworks
- Supports automated integrations with all the cloud infrastructure
- Supports 24×7 real-time monitoring of the compliance status
- Provides auditor-friendly dashboard with all evidence data
- Provides out-of-box policies template & supports customization of the same
- Supports workflows related to onboarding & offboarding of employees
- Supports common control framework, such that controls get automatically mapped to multiple frameworks
- Offers a secure way to share your security posture (both publicly and on-demand)
Also, check out: Difference between SOC and ISO 27001
Breeze through SOC 2 Compliance with Sprinto
Forward-thinking organizations that want to streamline the path to attestation have realized that SOC 2 automation is the way to go. It paves the way for quicker attestations and helps secure better enterprise deals. Compliance automation tools like Sprinto not only solve immediate compliance needs but also help formulate a long-term strategy.
With capabilities such as in-built policy templates, integrated risk assessments, continuous monitoring, automated evidence collection, access controls, and training modules, it helps you become audit-ready in a matter of weeks.
FAQs
If your team uses AI agents, service accounts, API keys, or automation bots, include them in your SOC 2 access review and evidence workflows. These identities can access repositories, cloud systems, ticketing tools, databases, and SaaS applications, so they should have clear owners, approved permissions, rotation policies, and deprovisioning procedures. SOC 2 automation can help by tracking non-human identities, mapping them to controls, monitoring privileged access, and preserving review evidence.
Yes. SOC 2 automation can help teams prepare for and manage the Type 2 observation period by continuously collecting evidence, monitoring control failures, tracking remediation, and keeping audit tasks visible. It does not shorten the observation period itself, but it reduces the risk of discovering missing evidence or failed controls after the audit window has already started.
For tools that cannot be integrated, teams should use a documented manual evidence workflow. Assign an owner, define the required evidence format, set a refresh cadence, and upload exports, screenshots, reports, or signed documents against the relevant SOC 2 control. Manual evidence should show when it was collected, who reviewed it, and whether any exception or remediation is still open.
SOC 2 automation should continuously monitor controls tied to access, infrastructure, devices, vulnerabilities, code changes, employee onboarding and offboarding, training, vendor reviews, incident response, and policy acknowledgments. The goal is to catch failed controls early and keep evidence current instead of rebuilding proof during audit prep.
Yes, but it depends on how the platform supports control mapping and manual evidence. If you already have custom controls, spreadsheets, screenshots, policy records, or evidence from a previous audit, your SOC 2 automation tool should let you import or upload them and map them to the right Trust Services Criteria. The important step is the review: your team and auditor still need to confirm that the evidence is current, correctly scoped, and valid for the audit period.
SOC 2 automation can handle many repetitive tasks, but some areas still require human judgment and accountability. Examples include management reviews, risk acceptance decisions, leadership oversight, and auditor walkthroughs. Specific HR processes, such as background checks and access approvals, often require manual validation. Automation reduces effort and errors, but people are still responsible for control intent, exceptions, and sign-offs.
SOC 2 automation can make security questionnaires easier to answer by centralizing policies, controls, evidence, access reviews, vendor records, and audit status in one place. It does not remove the need for human review, especially when a customer asks about product-specific controls, exceptions, roadmap items, or contractual commitments. The practical benefit is that your team can respond based on current evidence rather than chasing screenshots and policy owners every time a questionnaire arrives.
Author
Srividhya Karthik
Srividhya Karthik, is a Content Lead at Sprinto, she artfully transforms the complex world of compliance into accessible and intriguing reads. Srividhya has half a decade of experience under her belt in the compliance world across frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR and more. She is a formidable authority in the domain and guides readers with expertise and clarity.Go beyond the surface and uncover the governance, risk, and compliance insights that actually matter.
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