No security consultant can sign off on your SOC 2
No security consultant can sign off on your SOC 2. Only a licensed CPA firm can issue the report.
Worth knowing before you go shopping, because plenty of firms will sell you something adjacent and let you assume it is the same thing.
There is a second detail that catches more companies, and it costs more.
A Type II report tests whether your controls operated over a period, usually three months for a first report, rather than on a single date. That period is the observation window.
So a critical finding still sitting open inside that window stops being a private engineering matter. Your auditor will ask when it was found and when it was closed, and the answer shapes what the report says about your controls. That report is the document your customer's procurement team reads.
Close your findings before the window opens, not during it. It is the cheapest item on the entire SOC 2 list, and almost nobody sequences it that way, because the people selling the engagement are not paid to tell you what to do in the quarter before it starts.
https://lnkd.in/eBJN8NkQ