All that is to say: you want to minimize the amount of security work you do for your Type 1, down to a small set of best practices you know you're going to comply with forever (single sign-on and protected branches are basically 90% of it). You can always add controls later. Removing them is a giant pain in the ass.

This is always my concern for people going into SOC2 cold: vendors in the space will use the Type 1 as an opportunity for you to upskill your team and get all sorts of stuff deployed. A terrible and easily avoided mistake.

I write this only because the piece ends with Excalidraw psyched to have cleared their Type 1. I hope their auditors told them they were always going to clear that bar.

Can someone explain what they meant by this? Questionnaires by who, and why?

> SOC 2 is a security and compliance framework created by the AICPA

How is it that a group of accountants (the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants) was able to create a security framework for software, and position themselves as the sole gatekeeper who decides which auditors are allowed to certify SaaS vendors?

I’m surprised that companies would look to accountants, rather than people from the tech industry, to tell them whether a vendor has good IT security practices.

Yet the whole tech industry seems to be on board with this, even Google, Microsoft, etc. How did this come to be?

Some minor nits. One can't be SOC 2 "certified". You can only receive an attestation that the controls are designed (for the Type 1) and operating effectively (for the Type 2). So, the correct phrase would be that Excalidraw+ has received its "SOC 2 Type 1 attestation" for the x,y,z Trust Services Criteria (usually Security, Availability, and Confidentiality. Companies rarely select the other two - Privacy, and Processing Integrity - unless there's overlap with other compliance frameworks like HIPAA, etc.)Reason this is important is because phrasing matters, and the incorrect wording indicates lack of maturity.

Also, as others have said, no one "fails" a SOC 2 audit. You can only get one of four auditor opinions - Unmodified, Qualified, Adverse, and Disclaimer (you want to shoot for Unmodified).

As fyi, the technical areas that auditors highly scrutinize are access management (human and service accounts), change management (supply chain security and artifact security), and threat and vulnerability management (includes patch management, incident response, etc). Hope this information helps someone as they get ready for their SOC 2 attestation :-)

Similarly, the report areas you want to be very careful about are Section 3: System Description (make sure you don't take on compliance jeopardy by signing up for an overly broad system scope), and Section 4: Testing Matrices (push back on controls that don't apply to you, or the audit test plan doesn't make sense - auditors are still stuck in the early 00's / "client server legacy data center" mode and don't really understand modern cloud environments).

Finally, if you're using Vanta/Drata or something similar - please take time to read the security policy templates and don't accept it blindly for your organization - because once you do, then it gets set in stone and that's what you are audited against (example - most modern operating systems have anti-malware built in, you don't need to waste money for purchasing a separate software, at least for year one - so make sure your policy doesn't say you have a separate end point protection solution running. Another one, if you have an office that you're using as a WeWork co-working space model only, most of the physical security controls like cameras, badge systems etc either don't apply or are the landlord's responsibility, so out of scope for you).

Hope this comment helps someone! SOC 2 is made out to be way more complicated (and expensive) than it actually needs to be.

and since we're also running an open core setup with paid SaaS, same pain. had to clearly draw lines - what parts stay public, what goes behind login, what actions need tracking. OSS gives you velocity but hides the surface area until compliance hits. things/processes no one cared about when we were shipping fast suddenly became blockers.

it just checks if you said you'd do something and whether there's proof you actually did. forces you to grow up, in a way that isn't very founder friendly

Is it easy to bs your way through a soc2 certificate? Like are the companies in my experience lying or gaming the system, or are the auditors incompetent?