SOC 2 Without the Headaches: A Developer-Friendly Guide to Attestation

SOC 2 attestation says you take security seriously, but proving it is another story. It’s not just about having policies on paper. It’s about showing that your systems, teams, and processes can stand up to scrutiny, day in and day out.

That’s where things get complicated. Dev teams are shipping fast, toolchains are sprawling, and risk lives in everything from cloud configs to third-party dependencies. Staying compliant means locking down every layer and having the evidence to prove it.

With the right testing strategy and tight alignment between security and engineering, you can meet SOC 2 requirements without slowing down or burning out your teams.

Understanding SOC 2 attestation 

SOC 2 is more than a checkbox. It’s how modern businesses prove they can be trusted with sensitive data. It is designed for cloud-native and tech-driven companies and sets the standard for how customer information should be protected, processed, and managed across systems.

If your team builds, stores, or transmits customer data, SOC 2 will likely be on your radar soon. It’s increasingly expected by enterprise buyers, partners, and investors who want to know your security program isn’t just words on a slide.

At its core, SOC 2 is about showing that your controls are sound and that you have the evidence to back them up. 

SOC 2 Trust Service Criteria (TSC)

To earn a SOC 2 attestation, companies are evaluated against five Trust Services Criteria (TSC), but only security is mandatory. The rest are optional, depending on your scope, customer needs, or industry.

Here’s a quick breakdown of what each TSC covers:

• Security: The baseline of protecting systems and data from unauthorized access, misuse, or damage.

• Availability: Making sure systems are up and running when users need them.

• Confidentiality: Keeping sensitive information protected within your environment.

• Processing integrity: Ensuring systems process data accurately, reliably, and as expected.

• Privacy: Managing personal data according to your stated policies and user agreements.

SOC 2 reports come in two flavors:

• Type I evaluates whether your controls are in place at a specific point in time.

• Type II examines how those controls perform over time, usually over 3–12 months.

Younger companies often start with Type I for speed, while more mature organizations opt for Type II to prove long-term consistency and control.

SOC 2 attestation pays off across the board: lower risk, fewer compliance headaches, stronger buyer trust, and even lower cyber insurance premiums.

Key challenges in achieving SOC 2 compliance

Preparing for SOC 2 isn’t just a checklist but a full-team effort that touches almost every corner of the business. Security, engineering, IT, ops, and leadership must align on what’s being audited, how it’s being documented, and whether the evidence can stand up to review. And they need to do it without derailing their day-to-day work.

One of the first hurdles is defining the audit scope. Picking between Type I and Type II, deciding which systems and controls are in play, and mapping everything to the Trust Services Criteria can quickly get overwhelming. Risk assessments, gap analyses, and control testing take real time and coordination before the audit begins.

For development teams, the pressure goes up another notch. Applications, infrastructure, and dependencies all need to be secured in-flight. Without automated tooling and unified workflows, proving that controls are enforced consistently can feel impossible, especially when changes fly through CI/CD pipelines.

Type II audits raise the bar even higher. You’re not just proving your controls exist. You’re showing they work overtime. That means continuous visibility, frequent testing, and a compliance approach that can keep pace with evolving systems and risks.

Why security testing is crucial for SOC 2 attestation

SOC 2 goes beyond documented policies, asking you to prove that your controls work. That means showing how you find risks, fix them, and keep systems secure over time. Continuous security testing helps teams do precisely that, and it’s one of the most efficient ways to stay ready for audits without slowing development down.

The most effective testing strategies cover every layer of your application stack:

• Static Application Security Testing (SAST): Scan proprietary code during development to catch vulnerabilities early before deployment or merging. When integrated into IDEs or CI/CD pipelines, SAST keeps secure coding aligned with day-to-day workflows.

• Dynamic Application Security Testing (DAST): Test live apps or staging environments for vulnerabilities that only surface at runtime, helping teams validate protections tied to both security and availability.

• Software Composition Analysis (SCA): Monitor open source libraries for known vulnerabilities and licensing issues. With modern applications built on third-party components, SCA is essential for managing software supply chain risk.

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scanning: Review cloud configuration files before deployment to catch misconfigurations and enforce access controls. IaC scanning supports traceability, change management, and version control, which are key areas that SOC 2 auditors care about.

These tools give your team real coverage, tighter controls, and a clear paper trail that maps directly to SOC 2 criteria. 

Why is integration key to successfully achieving the SOC 2 attestation

SOC 2 demands consistency, and that’s hard to pull off with scattered tools, manual evidence gathering, and siloed teams. The more fragmented your security processes are, the harder it becomes to stay compliant at scale.

That’s why integration matters. When security testing is built into your teams’ tools and workflows, compliance becomes part of the process, not an extra project to manage.

Here’s how integrated security helps reduce overhead and keep your team audit-ready.

Reduce compliance burden 

When testing lives in too many tools, nothing moves fast. Teams waste time switching contexts, duplicating work, and trying to keep policies in sync. A unified approach cuts through that noise, standardizing how testing happens, automating key checks, and giving everyone a shared view of what’s secure and what needs fixing.

Improve security posture 

Strong security is about consistent habits. Integrated testing helps teams catch issues early, enforce policies automatically, and secure everything from code to cloud configs without slowing down. When secure practices are built into everyday workflows, they stick. That’s how secure coding becomes standard, not an afterthought.

Accelerate audit preparation 

No one wants to spend weeks digging through spreadsheets and screenshots. With integrated tools, teams can generate audit-ready reports automatically, complete with mapped controls, timestamps, and a clear history of testing and fixes. That means less time chasing documentation and more time focusing on what matters: building and securing great software. 

Achieving SOC 2 attestation with Snyk 

SOC 2 shows that your security practices hold up under pressure. Snyk helps make that possible without slowing your teams down. By embedding security into your existing workflows, Snyk automates risk detection, streamlines documentation, and supports continuous compliance so your team can spend less time prepping for audits and more time shipping secure software.

Here’s how Snyk supports the full stack:

• Snyk Code: Uses SAST to catch vulnerabilities while you write code.

• Snyk Open Source: Applies SCA to identify and fix issues in third-party dependencies.

• Snyk IaC: Scans and secures infrastructure-as-code configurations before deployment.

• Snyk API & Web: Discovers and tests the security of APIs and web apps, even those whose code was generated by AI.

Looking for more hands-on guidance? Download our SOC 2 best practices cheat sheet.