SOC 2 SOP software with the Trust Services Criteria seeded on day one
Every SOC 2 Common Criterion plus Availability and Confidentiality is preloaded as a control. Map your existing policies, acknowledge them with your workforce, and stop losing audit days to documentation assembly.
Why SOC 2 teams struggle with procedures
Evidence collection is solved. Procedure governance isn't.
Vanta, Drata, and Secureframe collect system-level evidence brilliantly. The gap is everything else: written procedures auditors can sample, approval history on each, workforce acknowledgment at revision, and a traceable change log. That's the part teams cobble together from Notion, Google Docs, and a quarterly all-hands slide.
Type 2 examinations raise the stakes. Your auditor is establishing "operating effectiveness" over a multi-month window, which means they need procedures that were approved before that window started, were followed during the window, and have a revision history showing changes were managed. SOP Studio produces exactly that evidence automatically — versioning every change, logging every acknowledgment, and linking every procedure to the TSCs it satisfies.
What's seeded
Common Criteria plus the two additional categories most audits include.
CC1 — Control Environment
Integrity & ethics, board oversight, organizational structure, competence, accountability.
CC2 — Communication & Info
Information quality, internal communication of responsibilities, external communication.
CC3 — Risk Assessment
Specify objectives, identify & analyze risks, consider fraud, assess significant changes.
CC4 — Monitoring Activities
Ongoing and separate evaluations, communication of deficiencies.
CC5 — Control Activities
Select and develop controls, technology control activities, policy/procedure deployment.
CC6 — Logical & Physical Access
Access security, registration, provisioning, physical access, data disposal, external access.
CC7 — System Operations
Vulnerability management, security-event monitoring, incident evaluation and response, recovery.
CC8 — Change Management
Authorize, design, develop, test, approve, and implement changes.
CC9 — Risk Mitigation
Business-disruption mitigation, vendor and business-partner risk management.
A — Availability
Capacity management, backup and environmental protections, recovery-plan testing.
C — Confidentiality
Identify/protect confidential information; dispose at end of retention period.
Control summaries are original paraphrases of the AICPA Trust Services Criteria — we reference each criterion by its canonical identifier and link to the AICPA TSC page so your auditor can verify our summary against the source.
Maps cleanly to ISO 27001
Doing SOC 2 and ISO 27001? One procedure, two certifications.
The same access-control procedure usually satisfies CC6.1 in SOC 2 and A.8.2/A.5.15 in ISO 27001. Map once, cover both.
Frequently asked
SOC 2 SOP software questions, answered.
Does SOP Studio replace my SOC 2 auditor?
No. SOC 2 examinations must be performed by a licensed CPA firm. SOP Studio sits between your operations team and your auditor — it's where the procedures live that the auditor will sample during Type 2 field work. Customers routinely use SOP Studio alongside their auditor-of-choice (Johanson, A-LIGN, Schellman, BARR Advisory, Sensiba, Insight, Prescient) with no coordination required.
How does SOP Studio compare to Vanta, Drata, or Secureframe?
Vanta, Drata, and Secureframe are automated evidence collectors — they pull telemetry from your tech stack (AWS, GitHub, Okta, etc.) and map it to SOC 2 controls. SOP Studio is the procedure documentation layer above that. Most SOC 2 audits need both. SOP Studio integrates with evidence-collection tools or stands alone as the system of record for written procedures. Customers often describe the split as: "Vanta proves the system is configured right, SOP Studio proves the team follows the process."
Which Trust Services Criteria are seeded?
The full SOC 2 Common Criteria (CC1.1 through CC9.2 — 32 requirements across Control Environment, Communication & Information, Risk Assessment, Monitoring Activities, Control Activities, Logical & Physical Access, System Operations, Change Management, Risk Mitigation) plus the most commonly audited additional categories — Availability (A1.1-A1.3) and Confidentiality (C1.1-C1.2). Processing Integrity and Privacy are added per-customer where the audit scope requires.
Do I need one SOP per TSC, or can they group?
They group heavily. A single access-control procedure typically satisfies CC6.1 (logical access), CC6.2 (user registration), CC6.3 (role-based access), and CC6.6 (external access). SOP Studio tracks the many-to-many mapping — one procedure can satisfy five criteria, one criterion can be satisfied by three procedures — and shows coverage at both the procedure and TSC level.
What about SOC 2 Type 1 vs Type 2?
Type 1 examines whether controls are designed effectively at a point in time; Type 2 examines whether controls operate effectively over a period (typically 3, 6, or 12 months). SOP Studio supports both. The version history, acknowledgment records, and change log SOP Studio maintains are exactly the artifacts a Type 2 examination requires to establish "operating effectiveness" through time.
How does this help with customer security questionnaires?
Customer questionnaires (Drata Trust, OneTrust DataGuidance, bespoke Excel) typically ask whether you have policies + procedures for access, change management, incident response, vendor management, etc. With SOP Studio, you answer yes and attach the relevant procedure — version-stamped, approved, and acknowledged. Response time drops from hours to minutes.
What if we're pre-SOC 2 and just exploring?
Great starting point. Companies often build their first procedure library 6-12 months before their first SOC 2 field work. Starting with SOP Studio early means the procedures your auditor asks for already exist, are approved, and have attestation evidence by the time the examination starts — turning "readiness" from a scramble into a formality.
Your auditor will ask for procedures. Be ready with a click.
Book a 30-minute demo and we'll walk your current Type 1 or Type 2 scope — showing exactly where your existing procedures cross-walk and where the gaps are before your auditor finds them.