What Are the Key Steps in Preparing for a SOC 2 Readiness Assessment?
Achieving SOC 2 compliance is a major milestone for organizations that handle sensitive customer data—especially in the SaaS, IT services, and cloud-hosting spaces.
At first glance, preparing for a readiness assessment might seem redundant. After all, it’s meant to be the step that helps you prepare for the real audit—so why prepare for your preparation? But in practice, a SOC 2 readiness assessment is where critical groundwork gets done. It’s where scope is defined, gaps are identified, and processes are validated before the stakes are higher. The stronger your approach to readiness, the smoother your path will be through the formal audit.
SOC 2 reports are issued by licensed CPA firms after evaluating an organization’s controls related to the Trust Services Criteria (TSC): Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy. But before the actual audit begins, most organizations undergo a SOC 2 readiness assessment to confirm they’re truly ready for that level of scrutiny.
Here’s a look at the key steps your organization should follow to make the most of the readiness process and lay a solid foundation for SOC 2 success.
1. Understand Your Purpose and Define the Scope
Every SOC 2 journey begins with an important internal conversation: Why are we doing this? Is it because a major client requested it? Are you trying to build trust in a new market? Do you need it to close larger enterprise deals or compete with bigger players?
Understanding the purpose behind your SOC 2 effort will shape decisions about scope, including:
- Which business units or systems are in-scope
- Which of the Trust Services Criteria you want included in the report
- Whether a Type I (point-in-time) or Type II (period-of-time) report is appropriate
A readiness assessment should help you zero in on these answers. But you should walk into it with a preliminary view of your environment so you’re not starting from scratch.
2. Know Your Environment—Inside and Out
A successful SOC 2 audit hinges on your System Description, the narrative you provide to describe what’s being evaluated. This includes:
- The services you provide to customers
- The systems that support those services
- Infrastructure, software, people, data, and processes involved
- Your key third parties (also known as Subservice Organizations)
- What responsibilities you expect clients to fulfill themselves (Complementary User Entity Controls, or CUECs)
You—not the auditor—are responsible for creating this system description and properly defining your controls. The auditor will test the design and operating effectiveness of those controls, but you’re the one establishing the ground rules. If your system description or scope is unclear, the rest of your audit may be built on shaky ground.
To get this right, you need to:
- Document your data flows and infrastructure
- Identify key assets and access points
- Inventory all third-party vendors that support your in-scope services
- Confirm how your clients interact with your systems and what controls they need to have in place
Without a solid understanding of your environment, you risk misrepresenting or omitting critical components of your control landscape.
3. Establish and Review Foundational Policies and Procedures
Policies and procedures are the backbone of your SOC 2 compliance effort. They reflect how your organization is supposed to operate in areas like:
- Access control
- Change management
- Incident response
- Data retention and encryption
- Business continuity
- Vendor management
During the readiness assessment, you’ll want to confirm that these policies:
- Exist and are documented
- Align with the relevant Trust Services Criteria
- Are reviewed and updated annually
- Are actually being followed in practice
This last point cannot be overstated. If your policy says you perform quarterly access reviews or vulnerability scans, you need to prove that it’s actually happening. Auditors will look for evidence over time—and if you can’t back up your claims, it can result in a control failure.
4. Perform a Risk Assessment
SOC 2 is fundamentally about risk management. A risk assessment helps identify the most relevant threats to your environment and the controls in place to mitigate them.
This exercise is typically required as part of the Security criterion and sets the tone for your entire control framework.
As part of your readiness process, you should:
- Conduct or update your risk assessment
- Identify assets, threats, vulnerabilities, and impact levels
- Evaluate current risk treatments and whether they’re sufficient
- Tie your control objectives back to these identified risks
Many organizations treat risk assessments as a one-time exercise, but in reality, they should be reviewed at least annually—or when significant changes occur in your business or technical environment.
5. Evaluate Your Current Controls
If this isn’t your first SOC 2 rodeo, start by reviewing your prior audit report. Identify what controls were in place and make sure you're still following through on those commitments. If last year’s report said you performed quarterly vulnerability scans, but you only did two this year, that’s a control failure waiting to happen.
If this is your first SOC 2 audit, a readiness assessment is your opportunity to build and test your controls before they’re evaluated by a third party. You should:
- Review all existing controls mapped to each TSC
- Assess the maturity of each control (design, implementation, frequency)
- Gather or simulate evidence to validate that they’re working
- Identify gaps or inconsistencies between what’s documented and what’s happening
Gap analysis is a core component of SOC 2 readiness. It identifies where controls are missing, undocumented, or ineffective, and gives you time to fix them before the real audit begins.
6. Identify Subservice Organizations and CUECs
Most modern businesses rely heavily on third parties—whether it's a cloud service provider like AWS, an identity management tool like Okta, or a logging platform like Datadog.
For SOC 2 purposes, these are called Subservice Organizations, and you need to determine whether:
- You’re including their controls within the scope of your audit (inclusive method), or
- You’re excluding them and describing what controls they are responsible for (carve-out method)
If you’re carving them out, you also need to define what your clients are expected to do in return—these are your Complementary User Entity Controls (CUECs). For example, if you rely on your clients to enforce strong password policies within your platform, that expectation should be documented clearly in the report.
Understanding and documenting these relationships is a critical readiness activity, especially if your environment involves multiple vendors and integrations.
7. Define (and Be Honest About) Your Type II Testing Period
If you’re pursuing a SOC 2 Type II report, your readiness assessment needs to align with the period of performance you plan to submit for audit.
The testing period is usually 3, 6, or 12 months. During that time, auditors will sample evidence to validate that controls operated effectively throughout the entire period. That means evidence from January 2 must be as strong as it is on December 30.
Organizations sometimes make the mistake of setting a testing period that begins before they’ve fully implemented their controls. That’s a recipe for findings.
If your controls just became operational in July, don’t set your testing window from January. A readiness assessment will help clarify when your controls were effectively implemented and guide your selection of a realistic testing period that reflects your actual security posture.
8. Plan Remediation and Set Internal Timelines
The readiness phase will almost always uncover at least a few gaps—whether it’s missing documentation, outdated policies, or ineffective controls. Don’t panic. What matters is how your organization responds. Use this opportunity to:
- Document the gaps
- Prioritize fixes based on risk
- Assign ownership to individuals or teams
- Set internal deadlines for resolution
- Schedule a check-in before the formal audit kicks off
Give yourself a buffer between completing readiness and starting the audit. That way, you can validate that remediation efforts were successful and aren’t rushed.
9. Engage Stakeholders and Build a Culture of Accountability
SOC 2 readiness isn’t just an IT project—it’s a company-wide initiative. Leadership needs to understand what’s being evaluated, department heads need to take ownership of processes, and staff need to follow policies consistently.
Communicate early and often about:
- What SOC 2 is and why it matters
- What roles each department plays
- What timelines and expectations look like
- How compliance is being tracked
In some organizations, preparing for SOC 2 helps formalize processes that have been ad-hoc or undocumented. In others, it surfaces long-overdue risks or operational inefficiencies. Either way, success comes down to communication, coordination, and a commitment to continuous improvement.
Final Thoughts
A SOC 2 readiness assessment isn’t a regulatory checkbox—it’s a critical opportunity to build a secure, audit-ready foundation. By understanding your environment, defining clear scope and controls, reviewing your policies, performing a gap analysis, and selecting the right testing period, you can position your organization for a smooth and successful SOC 2 audit.
Done right, the readiness process not only helps you pass your audit—it helps you improve how your business operates.
If you’re unsure where to start or want expert guidance throughout the process, Compass IT Compliance offers full SOC 2 readiness support, from risk assessments to control design and audit preparation. Contact us today to schedule a consultation.
Contact Us
Share this
You May Also Like
These Related Stories

What is a SOC 2 Gap Assessment? The First Step to Compliance

Why SOC 1 and SOC 2 Are Essential for Venture Capital (VC) Firms

No Comments Yet
Let us know what you think