14 Common Mistakes Companies Make When Preparing For SOC 2

Many companies underestimate the preparation required and unintentionally make mistakes that lead to delays, control exceptions, or even modified opinions. While SOC 2 is not designed to punish companies, gaps in readiness can damage customer trust and slow down deals.

This guide walks through the 18 most common mistakes companies make when preparing for SOC 2, and how you can avoid them to achieve faster, cleaner audit outcomes.

One of the most frequent issues companies face is assuming that SOC 2 is just a matter of filling out templates or copying generic controls. This mindset leads to writing policies that look polished but do not reflect actual practice.

SOC 2 evaluates the effectiveness of your controls, not the appearance of your documentation:

Misdefining the audit scope is a common and costly mistake. Over-scoping the audit leads to unnecessary work, added controls, and wasted time evaluating systems or services that are irrelevant to the audit.

Under-scoping, however, poses a much greater risk. If critical components of your service or supporting systems are excluded, auditors may issue a qualified opinion, or clients may reject the report altogether. Proper scoping requires an accurate understanding of your architecture, data flows, customer commitments, and the boundaries of the service being audited.

Many companies believe they can go straight into the audit without first performing a readiness assessment. This often leads to discovering missing evidence, undocumented controls, or outdated policies during the audit itself - when timelines are tight and fixing issues becomes exponentially harder.

A readiness assessment acts as a dress rehearsal and helps you surface control gaps early. Without it, your audit team may spend valuable time scrambling for documentation or implementing rushed fixes. Conducting a readiness assessment significantly increases confidence heading into the formal audit.

SOC 2 can fail when only the Security or IT team sees compliance as "their job." Engineering, HR, Operations, Legal, and senior leadership all play a critical role in audit success.

When these teams do not understand the importance of SOC 2, they deprioritize tasks, ignore evidence requests, or provide inconsistent information. SOC 2 should be communicated as a business priority that enables growth, supports sales, and strengthens customer trust. When leadership clearly communicates its importance, teams are more engaged and cooperative.

Leadership often expects SOC 2 audits to be completed within a few weeks. In reality, the process - from readiness to fieldwork to final report - usually spans several months. When these expectations are not managed early, internal pressure builds, teams feel rushed, and trust erodes.

Establishing a realistic timeline with buffer periods, communicating milestones, and providing regular status updates ensures that everyone remains aligned. Explaining why the audit takes time helps stakeholders appreciate the purpose of the process rather than seeing it as a bureaucratic hurdle.

For example, if Security asks Engineering for logs on Friday, but Engineering is pulled into a production issue, they would not be able to meet that deadline right away, slowing down your audit preparation. Therefore, teams must set internal deadlines that are earlier than auditor deadlines and follow up proactively. Building buffer time into requests ensures that delays do not cause larger issues.

Audit activities often require input from engineering leaders, operations managers and other department heads. When leadership is not fully committed to the process, they may cancel interviews, decline walkthroughs or just not put in enough engagement.

This signals to auditors that controls may not be consistently applied. Ensuring leadership understands their role and commits time in advance prevents disruptions and ensures a successful audit.

SOC 2 requires policies that are accurate, approved, reviewed periodically, and aligned with actual business practices. Many companies rely on outdated templates or create policies that describe processes they do not follow.

This discrepancy is quickly identified by auditors and is one of the top reasons companies receive findings. Proper policy hygiene requires annual reviews, documented approvals, clear versioning, and ensuring that employees acknowledge and understand the policies. The goal is not to have long policies, but accurate ones.

Even when controls are performed correctly, many companies struggle to prove it because evidence is missing or disorganized. Screenshots, logs, approval emails, and system records are essential in demonstrating compliance.

When evidence is stored across personal laptops, Slack threads or scattered folders, companies waste countless hours trying to assemble documentation during the audit. Poorly presented evidence - such as submitting entire configuration files without highlighting relevant settings - also slows down the audit and creates confusion. Maintaining a centralized, consistent, and clearly labeled evidence repository ensures smoother communication with auditors and reduces the risk of exceptions.

Access control failures continue to be the number one cause of SOC 2 findings. Problems frequently arise from lapses in timely offboarding, overly broad administrative privileges, incomplete access reviews, or failing to include contractors in access processes.

Because access directly affects security, auditors scrutinize it closely. If access management is inconsistent or undocumented, the likelihood of high-risk findings increases significantly. Strong onboarding and offboarding workflows, role-based access controls, and periodic access reviews are essential safeguards.

A complete asset inventory is foundational to SOC 2 compliance. Without knowing which devices, virtual machines, tools, and systems exist in your environment, it becomes impossible to ensure they are secured and monitored properly.

Shadow IT and forgotten legacy systems create serious security risks. Auditors routinely flag missing or inaccurate asset inventories. Maintaining an up-to-date list of assets with both automated discovery and manual validation helps prevent unmanaged devices from compromising your audit.

SOC 2 requires annual security training for all employees and documented acknowledgments confirming completion. Many companies fail to track training consistently or do not maintain proper records.

Missing acknowledgements or outdated training materials often lead to automatic control failures. Ensuring that training is completed on schedule and properly logged helps demonstrate your organization's commitment to security best practices.

Companies frequently assume that cloud providers or SaaS tools automatically comply with SOC 2 requirements on their behalf. However, SOC 2 expects companies to review vendor SOC reports, understand shared responsibility models, and monitor vendors throughout the year.

Failing to do so leads to coverage gaps where neither your team nor the vendor can demonstrate compliance. Proper vendor oversight ensures that all responsibilities are clearly understood and documented.

Failing to perform regular vulnerability scans, track remediation efforts, or shield systems from deprecated protocols such as TLS 1.0 and 1.1 is a major SOC 2 red flag. SOC 2 emphasizes proactive security practices.

Without proper scanning and patch tracking, companies increase their exposure to threats and risk audit exceptions. Maintaining consistent scanning schedules and documenting remediation efforts ensures compliance and strengthens overall security.

SOC 2 evaluates controls over the entire audit period - not just at audit time. When companies treat compliance as a one-time event, controls break down due to turnover, system changes, or technology updates.

Continuous monitoring helps ensure controls remain effective and reduces the risk of last-minute surprises when auditors arrive.

Conclusion

SOC 2 preparation is not just a technical exercise. It requires planning, strong documentation practices, cross-department collaboration and proactive communication.

Companies that understand and avoid these common mistakes navigate audits more smoothly and reduce the likelihood of exceptions.

By treating SOC 2 as an ongoing discipline rather than a once-a-year project, companies build a stronger security posture, greater trust with customers and unlock business opportunities with enterprise clients!