SOC 2 is not a certification. It is an attestation report issued by a licensed CPA firm expressing an opinion about your controls. Most vendor websites, sales decks, and even compliance platforms get this basic fact wrong, and the confusion costs companies real time and money.
Most companies pay five figures annually for penetration testing they could run themselves. Open-source scanners like Nuclei, testssl.sh, and nmap cover the OWASP Top 10, generate auditor-ready reports, and run monthly on a cron job for zero cost.
US buyers want SOC 2. European buyers want ISO 27001. The overlap between both frameworks is significant, but the way they work, what they cost, and which one you should chase first depends on who you are selling to and where your company sits right now.
Compliance platforms charge thousands annually for what is essentially organisation software. We moved to a Git repository, Google Drive for auditor access, and AI for the tedious work. The only cheque we write now goes to our CPA firm for the actual audit.
Your auditor doesn't care about marketing promises or vendor certifications alone. They need evidence of YOUR controls, complete data handling documentation, and thorough audit trails that prove your AI coding tool isn't creating compliance gaps in your SOC 2 framework or exposing sensitive data.
RAG systems dont create new security risks - they amplify whatever data security posture you already have. Weak access controls become glaringly obvious when your AI can retrieve anything.