Many prospects and existing customers, especially large printers and agencies, wanted MindFire to be SOC 2 compliant. This was becoming a barrier for MindFire in certain sales situations. Its IT staff and salespeople ended up endlessly answering tedious security questionnaires for potential clients – instead of being able to immediately inspire confidence by presenting an attested SOC 2 compliance report.
MindFire had initially thought of going to a traditional compliance consulting and audit firm, but that proved to be out of their budget. Compliance automation software began to look like a much more cost-effective and timely solution.
After looking at alternatives, MindFire chose Akitra’s compliance automation for three key reasons:
1- The full set of customizable policies and controls provided by Akitra helped dramatically shorten the compliance readiness process. This gave MindFire the documentation it needed along with the ability to tailor those policies and controls to their precise needs.
2- Akitra’s industry-leading breadth of integrations with cloud platform services (AWS, Azure, GCP) and other third-party SaaS services enabled continuous monitoring and automatic collection of evidence, critical for SOC 2 Type 2 and other frameworks.
3- Tracking workstation security through monitoring the correct usage of anti-virus, firewall, and encryption software, with the help of Akitra’s Shield endpoint agent, ensured a high level of employee compliance with SOC 2 security controls.
Akitra ensured that MindFire was able to complete the compliance project on time and on budget, from inception through completion of the final SOC 2 compliance report.
Kushal noted that one of the added benefits of using Akitra was the high level of expert compliance support he and his colleagues received throughout the process.
1- The total SOC 2 compliance expense was less than 50% of what it would have been with a traditional consulting and audit firm.
2- The time it took for them to get certified was approximately cut in half.
3- Accelerated the sales process. “It’s amazing how the behavior of customers and prospects has changed now that we can present our SOC2 report”, said Kushal. “Before SOC 2, we had to answer detailed questionnaires and get on long calls with the IT folks to discuss our security policies. Now, we are able to talk to the key decision-makers much sooner, which is a huge step towards closing deals. With our SOC 2 report, people readily accept it, move past the security questions, and focus on the important items related to the sales contract.”
