CASE STUDY 04 • SECURITY & COMPLIANCE

SOC 2 in 7 weeks: from kickoff to clean audit

The Situation

A fast-growing AI infrastructure startup needed to achieve SOC 2 Type I readiness to close key enterprise software licensing contracts. They had high engineering standards but lacked documented compliance records, risk assessment policies, and automated audit proof logging.

What We Found

  • Deploy pipelines lacked mandatory security scanning and peer approval checks.
  • AWS user credentials and production roles were not aligned with least-privilege principles.
  • Incident response procedures were unwritten, relying entirely on ad-hoc messaging threads.

What We Did

We implemented automated security scanning and configuration checks across their codebases and cloud environments:

1. AWS Configuration Alignment

We wrote Terraform configurations to lock down IAM policies, restrict network access, and enable cloud trail logs across all accounts.

2. Pipeline Controls

We integrated static code analysis, vulnerability scanning, and cryptographical signing rules into their CI build templates.

3. Operational Policy Drafts

We created lightweight templates for disaster recovery tests, access review schedules, and security policy documents.

The Outcomes

The auditor completed their review on schedule, issuing a clean SOC 2 Type I report with zero exceptions found.

Engagement Metrics

Client Profile
AI Developer Infrastructure
Core Services
Security Operations, Compliance Audit
Timeline
7 Weeks
0
Exceptions
7w
Total Time

Engineering Reflection

Achieving SOC 2 compliance quickly requires deploying lightweight controls that satisfy auditing rules without creating administrative friction. If we did this project again, we would spend more time automating the initial IAM checks.

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