SOC 2 evidence that doesn’t feel like paperwork
Most SOC 2 pain is self‑inflicted.
Teams wait until “audit season,” then try to reconstruct months of reality from Slack threads and memory.
The fix isn’t more documentation. It’s making evidence a byproduct of how you already work.
What evidence should look like
Good evidence is boring:
- a PR with review + CI results
- a deployment record tied to that change
- an access review showing removals
- an incident drill with follow-ups tracked
- a restore test that actually ran
If you can’t point to artifacts like that, you’re doing paper compliance.
Evidence should answer three questions:
- What changed?
- Who approved it?
- Where did it go?
What to automate first (EM/VP view)
If you want the biggest impact with the least disruption:
- Access management (joiner/mover/leaver + periodic reviews)
- Change management (PR reviews + deploy traceability)
- Logging (auth/admin events, protected from tampering, no secrets)
- Incident response practice (tabletops + action items)
These are engineering workflows anyway — SOC 2 just makes you prove you do them consistently.
Where DawnOps fits
DawnOps includes a “SOC 2 Fundamentals” module that teaches teams what “controls vs evidence” actually means, using engineering-native examples instead of audit jargon.
Related reading
- SOC2 for Builders, Part 2: Data Classification and Logging Hygiene
- SOC2 for Builders, Part 1: Treat It Like a Product Requirement