SOC 2 Certification: 5 Steps to Get SOC 2 Certified in 2026

A customer, investor, or security team has asked for your SOC 2 report, and now a deal is waiting on it. If you run a cloud or SaaS company that handles other people’s data, this request is routine, and meeting it is one of the fastest ways to unblock enterprise sales.

This guide walks the whole journey: what SOC 2 actually proves, whether you need Type 1 or Type 2, which Trust Services Criteria apply to you, what evidence auditors ask for, how long it takes, and what it costs. It is written for the person who has to get it done without turning audit prep into a company-wide fire drill.

Let’s start with the one thing almost everyone gets wrong.

What is SOC 2 certification?

Strictly speaking, SOC 2 isn’t a certification at all. Unlike ISO 27001, which awards a certificate, SOC 2 results in an attestation report. It is a document issued by a licensed CPA firm following an independent audit of your controls.

SOC 2 is a voluntary standard developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) that defines how service organizations should manage customer data. The auditor checks your controls against up to five Trust Services Criteria: security, availability, confidentiality, processing integrity, and privacy. Security is the only mandatory one; you choose the rest based on your customers’ and contracts’ requirements.

The report comes in two forms. A Type 1 report attests that your controls are suitably designed at a single point in time. A Type 2 report goes further: it confirms those controls operated effectively across a defined window, usually three to twelve months. That observation period is why a Type 2 takes longer to earn than the preparation work alone suggests.

The path to the report runs through four steps: select your Trust Services Criteria, define and implement the controls, undergo the auditor’s assessment, and receive the report. How long it takes depends on your organization’s size, the scope you choose, and the auditor’s evaluation time.

Many buyers still ask for ‘SOC 2 certification’ in vendor reviews, so you’ll hear the phrase constantly in sales conversations. Use it if your prospects do. Just know that the document you hand them is a SOC 2 report, also called a SOC 2 attestation report. We will use “SOC 2 certification” throughout this guide because it is the common phrasing, but the correct term is attestation.

Why is SOC 2 certification required?

SOC 2 certification is voluntary compliance for service organizations to showcase their ability to protect sensitive information for customers, enabling them to build trust and commitment. It attests that necessary security controls and processes are implemented to protect customer assets and data.

A SOC 2 certification is a report on your organization’s adherence to one or more of the 5 TSCs of SOC 2, helping you attract and retain security-conscious customers or business partners and gain an advantage over uncertified competitors, while also demonstrating the solid design and effectiveness of the administrative and technical controls and policies you’ve implemented to protect your information security systems.

5 steps to get SOC 2 certification

Now that you’ve understood the role TSCs play in your SOC 2 certification journey let’s move on to the next steps.

But before we tell you everything you need to know about getting SOC 2 certification, let us first bust a popular myth. ‘There is no such thing as a SOC 2 certificate’. Instead, at the end of your SOC 2 journey, a certified SOC 2 auditor reviews your security systems and gives their ‘SOC 2 attestation‘ to your compliance posture.

Here are the 5 steps to get SOC 2 certified:

Step 1: Select the Trust Principles you want audited

Among the five TSCs, Security is the compulsory one. So you need to add that to the cart. If you store customers’ personal data, add Privacy to your SOC 2 cart. And if you manage the financial information of customers, then add processing integrity to the cart. All SaaS firms typically add Availability – since they are on the cloud, it’s an apt TSC for them. 

So the key is understanding and recognizing your business operations, mapping them with the TSC, and picking those that apply to your business.

It’s important to understand and remember that every criterion in the trust principles need not apply to your business. 

In our experience, customers usually go for Security, Availability, and Confidentiality. 

Step 2: Define the controls

Once you’ve selected the TSC that applies to your business, define the controls that will help you achieve compliance when mapped against the SOC 2 requirements. You can either look for control templates online or hire an external consultant.

For ease of application, you can classify these controls into two buckets:

• Administrative controls
• Technical security controls

Administrative Controls

These are the controls you will have to implement to demonstrate effectiveness in people management, physical security measures, documentation policies, policies for instances when a new person joins the team and when an existing member leaves the team, and more.

Technical Security Controls

Technical controls are those that you apply to ensure that your technical infrastructure is secure and built to protect customer data from internal and external threats. Examples of technical security controls include firewalls, access controls, multi-factor authentication (MFA), encryption methods, and more.

If your team uses AI agents, automation bots, service accounts, API keys, or AI vendors that touch production systems or customer data, include them in SOC 2 scoping and access-review evidence. These non-human identities should have clear owners, approved permissions, rotation rules, and deprovisioning steps. If an AI vendor supports the in-scope system, add it to your vendor list and document how its access, data use, and responsibilities are reviewed.

Step 3: Performance test of selected controls

There is one more step to SOC 2 compliance. Though this is not a mandatory requirement, it is a best practice.

After implementing your controls, you must test them, find control gaps vis-a-vis SOC 2 requirements, and remediate them. Post remediation, check again to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks.

This stage is also called the readiness assessment stage. Once you’ve chosen the trust criteria and applied the controls, you now assess whether you are ready to be audited by an external auditor. You can either assess your compliance posture yourself or have an external consultant review it and give you an unbiased opinion on your current security posture. 

This step is optional and is an added cost to your SOC 2 journey. But it is also one of the most widely implemented security practices.

Sprinto connects with your cloud, identity, HR, ticketing, endpoint, code repository, and security tools to collect and refresh evidence where possible. This reduces the need for teams to manually capture screenshots, maintain spreadsheets, or chase control owners whenever an auditor requests proof.

Step 4: Get your SOC 2 report audited by a certified CPA

The last step is to get an external auditor to review your security systems and compliance posture. This process will have you submit evidence for various controls, procedures, and policies. Again, expect frequent back and forth between the auditor and you.  You will be asked to share additional evidence, insights on a temporary or consistent lapse in control effectiveness, or something else that could come up. A typical audit goes for 4 to 6 weeks.

When you work with Sprinto, this process is significantly smoother because evidence collection is automated by AI agents and designed to run continuously. Sprinto organizes evidence related to controls and audit requirements, making the audit process easier to manage. Teams can review control status, evidence history, exceptions, and supporting documentation in one place before sharing evidence with the auditor.

Step 5: Receive a SOC 2 attestation report

Depending on how your controls perform, the auditor issues a SOC 2 attestation report. An unqualified report means the auditor did not identify material exceptions for the controls tested. A qualified, adverse, or disclaimer opinion means the report includes issues that customers may scrutinize, so you should review the findings, remediate gaps, and prepare stronger evidence for the next audit cycle.

Sprinto continuously monitors control health and surfaces gaps before they become audit issues. If something needs attention, the relevant owner can see what changed, what is at risk, and what action is needed. This matters especially for SOC 2 Type 2, where the auditor is not only looking at whether controls exist, but whether they operated consistently over time.

What is the difference between SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 certification?

There are two types of attestations you could go for in your SOC 2 Certification Journey. While these have some similarities, there are a few minor differences security certifications have.

• SOC 2 Type 1 attestations
• SOC 2 Type 2 attestations

SOC 2 Type 1 attestation is the simpler one and costs relatively less. That’s because it is a snapshot of how well your organization has implemented its internal controls and policies at a point in time. A typical SOC 2 Type 1 process takes roughly 1 to 3 months. SOC 2 Type 1 evaluates how well the implemented controls and policies are designed and mapped against the requirements listed for the TSCs you’ve chosen, at a single point in time.

Sprinto seamlessly integrates with your cloud system to continuously map entities that impact data security directly or indirectly. Using an integrated risk assessment system, it verifies and automatically records your risk status in detail.

Check out this detailed video on the difference:

SOC 2 Type 2 is significantly more comprehensive when compared to Type 1. SOC 2 Type 2 evaluates how well the implemented controls and policies are working and are mapped against the requirements listed for the TSCs you’ve chosen. A SOC 2 Type 2 attestation process has a monitoring period that lasts between 3 to 12 months.

Both SOC 2 Type 1 and SOC 2 Type 2 require businesses to undergo a mandatory audit to get attested.

In our experience, when SOC 2 attestations are needed to unblock sales deals, often prospects are looking for a SOC 2 Type 2 report unless the prospects have specifically mentioned that even a SOC 2 Type 1 will do the job.

How much does it cost to get a SOC 2 certification?

On average, SOC 2 certification costs between $20,000 and $50,000.

The total cost depends on:

• Audit fees – vary by auditor and scope (Type 1 vs Type 2).
• Readiness assessment/consulting – optional but often adds $5,000–$15,000.
• Security tools & training – $5,000–$20,000+, depending on needs.
• Internal resources & time – larger teams typically incur higher costs.

Companies that automate compliance (e.g., using Sprinto) often spend less because evidence collection, monitoring, and auditor coordination are streamlined.

Worried about your SOC 2 compliance efforts? Here’s a quick way to get a rough estimate on tech stack, automation, audit readiness, and more.

Here’s an infographic that walks you through the variables that affect the price.

How long does it take to become SOC 2 Certified?

You can get certified in months, not years. Realistically, the market standard timeline for SOC 2 Type 1 is 1 to 3 months, and for SOC 2 Type 2, it is 3 to 12 months. 

However, the following factors affect the total timeline:

1. It depends on the time taken by your organization to become SOC 2 audit-ready
2. The time taken by the auditor to complete the audit

What are Trust Services Criteria? Why is it important for SOC 2 certification?

Trust Service Criteria is the epicentre of your SOC 2 journey. Security, Availability, Confidentiality, Privacy, and Processing Integrity are the five Trust Service Criteria of SOC 2. 

Based on your business model, you will need to choose the criteria that apply to you and your processing activities. We’ve included a summary of the five trust service criteria and what they aim to achieve here.

You can choose the criteria that applies to your business based on the data you process. Note that off the five criteria, Security is a must-have, while the others are optional.

Before we dive in and learn more about the Trust Service Criteria, it is imperative to know that each of the five TSCs will apply to your organization’s Infrastructure, Software, People Policies, and other Procedures.

Security

As we mentioned earlier, Security is a must-have criterion and is also known as the common criterion.

Availability

This criterion will require your organization to demonstrate how they maintain uptime and meet global performance standards.

Confidentiality

This criterion requires your organization to demonstrate how confidential business information, such as intellectual property, contracts, or sensitive financial data, is protected from unauthorized access and disclosure, from the moment it enters your environment until it is safely disposed of.

Privacy

This criterion covers the protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII), the data that identifies a specific individual, such as names, addresses, or financial details, and the controls required to handle that personal data safely. For example, encryption protocols, access control mechanisms, and data loss prevention tools fall within the scope of this criterion.

Processing Integrity

Organizations in the fintech space and those who deal with payment processing are the ones who usually include this criterion in their SOC 2 Scope.

Note: The SOC 2 opinion must be issued by an independent CPA firm. A compliance platform can help you organize controls, collect evidence, and coordinate with auditors, but it does not issue the SOC 2 report or replace the auditor’s judgment.

How Sprinto helps you get SOC 2 audit-ready faster — and stay ready after the report

Sprinto is an Autonomous Trust Platform that brings SOC 2 readiness into one system. It helps you scope your program, map the right controls, assign owners, collect evidence from connected systems, and continuously monitor control health. Instead of managing SOC 2 through spreadsheets and last-minute follow-ups, teams get a live view of what is complete, what is pending, and what needs attention.

Our integrated dashboard gives you complete visibility of your compliance posture and a real-time score to help you monitor progress and identify areas in your business environment that need attention.

In addition, Sprinto’s compliance automation engine relies on AI agents, automated evidence collection, and continuous monitoring to ensure that auditors receive accurate evidence on controls, procedures, and policies directly from your live systems—not outdated snapshots taken at a single point in time.

That’s not all; our auditor-facing dashboard is custom-designed to meet the auditor’s requirements. Evidence is presented in an organized, auditor-friendly way, with historical control status and supporting documentation in one place. This can reduce back-and-forth during the audit, because auditors can review current and historical evidence without repeated requests.

Did we tell you about the cost? Because Sprinto automates large parts of the compliance lifecycle and continuously monitors your controls in the background, teams spend far less time on manual evidence collection and audit preparation. As a result, teams spend far less internal time on manual evidence collection and audit preparation. Final pricing depends on your scope, framework needs, and implementation requirements.

Talk to our experts today to see what your SOC 2 journey with Sprinto would look like, and feel free to ask them about timelines and pricing.

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