SOC 2 is more than just a compliance box to check; it’s an opportunity to demonstrate to existing customers and enterprise prospects that your organization handles sensitive data with care.
As a voluntary audit framework, SOC 2 requirements are only as stringent as your own commitments. If you overcommit or promise controls that don’t fit your business, you’ll end up burning time and resources on work that doesn’t solidify your security posture. Be conservative in scope initially, then gradually broaden it over time.
For organizations spearheading the SOC 2 journey internally, onboarding the right tools is another crucial consideration. Whether it’s collecting evidence, enforcing device coverage, or proving that infrastructure monitoring is more than just a policy, compliance tools simplify traditionally time-consuming steps toward SOC 2 compliance.
To help first-time organizations navigate the SOC 2 auditing process, we sat down with Ryan Johanson, CEO of Johanson Group. Ryan and his team have spent over a decade guiding organizations through SOC 2 audits, giving him a front-row view of the tools and processes that make the difference between wasted effort and smooth certification.
While every SOC 2 audit is unique, Ryan notes that organizations consistently face challenges related to evidence collection, corporate security, and production monitoring. Having the right tools in each category can transform the audit from a reactive scramble into a streamlined process.
At its core, SOC 2 requires organizations to provide reliable, repeatable proof that documented controls are active and enforced. Speaking from his auditing experience, Ryan explains that this proof typically comes down to three things:
Without automation, gathering this evidence usually means hours spent piecing together spreadsheets, screenshots, and emails. Not only is this tedious, but it often leads to gaps that force auditors to chase down clarifications.
That’s where Evidence Collection Tools (ECTs) such as Vanta, Drata, Thoropass, and Secureframe come in. These platforms automatically aggregate logs, configurations, and activity histories from the systems you already use, presenting auditors with records that are consistent and traceable. The result, Ryan says, is that “auditors can see not only that a control exists, but that it has been working consistently over time.”
Still, automation isn’t a silver bullet. A common mistake Ryan sees is teams overcommitting in these tools, documenting controls they can’t actually enforce in practice. Treating tool dashboards as the final deliverable rather than a starting point is another common pitfall Ryan sees first-time organizations falling into.
His advice: share your planned evidence collection approach with auditors before fieldwork. They’ll often tell you which integrations and reports they’ll accept, saving time and reducing surprises later.
SOC 2 requires every device in scope to be encrypted, patched, and access-controlled. From Ryan’s experience, this is often where audits stumble, not because of company size, but because even a single unmanaged device can undermine the entire compliance story. “It really only takes one device to open up a hole for somebody to come in through and wreak havoc,” he explains.
Auditors expect to see clear evidence that every endpoint is covered. In practice, that means:
Demonstrating this coverage usually falls to manual onboarding checklists, asset trackers, and screenshots, processes that are difficult to keep up to date and easy to miss when contractors or new hires are involved.
MDM platforms like Jamf and Intune help by enforcing encryption of local storage, requiring operating system updates, and ensuring screen locks are enabled. EDR tools like CrowdStrike and SentinelOne complement this by detecting threats in real time and producing logs that show how incidents were investigated and resolved. Together, they create an auditable trail that proves device compliance across the organization.
The mistakes Ryan sees most often are teams assuming written policies are enough, or overscoping by pulling in BYOD and contractor hardware unnecessarily. His advice: scope device coverage carefully and lean on MDM/EDR exports, which carry far more weight with auditors than screenshots or self-attestations.
Ryan notes that one of the biggest changes he’s seen in recent years is auditors expanding their focus into cloud infrastructure. “It used to be peripheral, but now it’s central, because that’s where customer data usually resides,” he explains. Auditors want to see not only that data is protected, but also that monitoring systems provide a clear trail showing how issues are detected and resolved.
Production and infrastructure (P&I) security tools make this possible. Platforms like Wiz continuously scan cloud environments for misconfigurations, risky permissions, and compliance drift.
Native services such as AWS GuardDuty detect unusual activity, from compromised credentials to malicious API calls. Beyond generating alerts, these tools provide the logs and ticketing integrations that demonstrate how alerts were investigated and remediated, evidence that auditors can trace back directly to your SOC 2 commitments.
According to Ryan, these are the checkpoints your organization should look to complete prior to the audit:
The most common mistake Ryan sees is overscoping, dragging dev or test systems into audits when they’re not hardened to production standards. Another pitfall is treating alerts as the end of the process; without a remediation trail, auditors have no proof that incidents were properly addressed.
Ryan’s advice: configure your P&I tools so alerts automatically feed into ticketing systems, creating a verifiable record of investigation and resolution. Then, validate those processes through tabletop exercises, which show auditors that your monitoring program isn’t just theoretical; it works in practice.
SOC 2 isn’t a pass-or-fail exercise. Instead, auditors issue one of three opinions: clean, modified, or, though rare, adverse. In most cases, organizations end up with a few exceptions: instances where a control wasn’t followed as documented.
Ryan makes it clear that exceptions aren’t catastrophic: “We mark what happened, and you have a chance to add a section of management’s response where you can say, here’s what happened, here’s how we remediated the situation, and what we’re going to do in the future.” In practice, the management response gives companies the opportunity to control the narrative and show customers they’re actively addressing issues.
A handful of exceptions won’t derail an audit. What matters is how quickly remediation occurs. In fact, companies can even shorten their next audit period, from twelve months down to six, to demonstrate that gaps have been closed. This proactive step reassures customers and partners that the control environment is secure and compliance posture is back on track.
For most organizations, SOC 2 is only the beginning. The same control catalog can form the foundation for other frameworks like ISO 27001, HIPAA, or NIST. The smartest path is to build once, then map across multiple standards, avoiding duplicate work and one-off compliance projects.
Achieving this requires more than tools alone. Ryan pointed out that organizations move faster when they have both automation to handle routine evidence and expert guidance to make sure scope and commitments are set realistically. Without that combination, teams either burn time chasing artifacts manually or end up overcommitting controls that don’t strengthen their security posture.
This is where Zip comes into play. By combining device management, endpoint security, identity protection, and automated evidence collection in a single platform, and pairing it with hands-on guidance throughout the audit process, Zip keeps lean teams audit-ready without additional headcount.
As Ryan mentions, this kind of support “saves organizations time and money, and makes the process go so much faster and easier.” The result is a foundation that not only helps you pass SOC 2, but also positions you to scale into future frameworks with confidence.
Get started with Zip today and turn SOC 2 into the foundation for lasting security and customer trust.
