A practical, ordered checklist to take you from zero to a SOC 2 report — without the busywork.
The checklist
- Define your scope. Pick the Trust Services Criteria your customers ask for (Security at minimum).
- Run a gap assessment. Compare your current controls to what SOC 2 expects.
- Write your policies. Information security, access control, incident response, change management, and more.
- Implement controls. Access management, encryption, monitoring, vulnerability management, backups.
- Connect your systems & collect evidence. Automate evidence from cloud, code, identity and devices.
- Remediate gaps. Fix what the gap assessment found, and re-test.
- Choose an auditor. Select a licensed CPA firm.
- Get a Type I (optional) to unblock deals quickly.
- Run the Type II window and collect evidence continuously across it.
- Receive your report and share it via a Trust Center.
The shortcutSteps 5, 6 and 9 are where teams lose weeks. Continuous automation collects evidence for you and flags gaps with fixes, so the checklist becomes mostly hands-off.
A practical starting checklist, not audit advice. The report is issued by a licensed CPA firm.