Webflow Input Enhancer
For the best experience, this project uses the Webflow Input Enhancer extension. We highly recommend installing it. Click here to download (use preview mode to access link)
Edited transcript excerpt from a recorded conversation with David Stoicescu, founder and CEO of Rovally.
What's the fastest a company can realistically get certified? The real answer is: it depends.
If you're a five to fifteen-person scrappy startup and you've got the resources and the tools in place, we can do it in as quickly as thirty days — because a SOC 2 Type I is really an audit that says "we have these things implemented." It's not necessarily the audit of "and we can demonstrate that we've been doing them." That's what a SOC 2 Type II is.
So for companies that are fast and small, and they have the proper team and security mindset and tools in place, it's a matter of implementing various processes on the HR and IT side, various controls — we can move on that pretty quickly. Thirty days is something we've done multiple times for a SOC 2 Type I.
Now, what about a SOC 2 Type II? That's actually difficult to answer, because the AICPA minimum for a Type II observation period is three months. You have to have been doing the right things for three months before you can get that audit.
The only way for us to know whether or not you're going to pass that audit is to onboard you, go through a gap assessment, and identify the gaps. We solve those things, and then we see if we can look back — if you've been doing things before we showed up. And oftentimes the answer is no. So we have to create a new observation period.
For a Type II, I would say the answer is: however long it takes to get through the gaps, plus three months.
For a SOC 2 Type I, as fast as thirty days for a small team with the right tools and mindset in place. For Type II, the honest answer is: however long it takes to close your gaps, plus a minimum of three months of clean operation. Most companies underestimate the first part.
This is one of the most common questions we hear from companies coming to us — and it almost always comes with urgency attached. An enterprise deal is on the table. A prospect just sent a security questionnaire with a deadline. Someone on the sales team is asking if you can have a SOC 2 report ready in thirty days.
The real answer depends on what you're asking about.
For a SOC 2 Type I, thirty days is achievable — under the right conditions. We've done it multiple times with small teams of five to fifteen people who came in with a security-conscious culture, the right tooling already in place, and the organizational bandwidth to move fast.
What that looks like in practice: you onboard, we run a gap assessment, identify what's missing, implement the controls, get your policies written, and get the auditors in. It's a compressed sprint, and it requires your team to be responsive and prioritize the work. But it's not theoretical. It happens.
The conditions that make it possible are specific, though. A larger organization with more complexity, more systems in scope, and more gaps to close will take longer — sometimes significantly longer. The thirty-day number is real for the right company, not a universal baseline.
Type II is a different conversation. The AICPA sets the minimum observation period at three months — meaning you have to demonstrate that your controls have been operating consistently for at least that long before the audit can happen. You can't compress that window.
What you can influence is what happens before it starts.
When we onboard a new customer for Type II, the first thing we do is a gap assessment. We look at everything: your policies, your infrastructure, your cloud configuration, your HR processes, your tooling. We identify what's in place and what isn't. Then we close the gaps.
The next question is whether we can look back at your history and count any of it toward the observation period. Were you doing background checks on new hires before we showed up? Were your access reviews happening on schedule? Was your logging configured and monitored? For most early-stage companies, the honest answer to all of those is no — which means we have to draw a line in the sand and start fresh. The observation period clock begins the day your controls go live, not before.
So the realistic timeline for Type II is: gap remediation, which takes as long as it takes, plus a minimum of three months. If your gap assessment comes back clean and you've already been operating a real compliance program, you could be looking at three months total. If we find significant gaps — which is the norm, not the exception — add the remediation time on top of that.
Most companies don't come to us six months before they need a certification. They come to us when a deal is already on the line. We have those conversations every week — teams staring at dozens of security questionnaires, a prospect asking for a SOC 2 report on a ninety-day timeline, a sales cycle that's been moving fast and suddenly hit a wall.
We've accommodated those timelines before. A Type I in thirty days buys you credibility with prospects while you build toward Type II. A bridge letter explaining that you're in an active observation period with a reputable firm can keep a deal moving. These aren't ideal situations, but they're workable.
The problem is when companies try to shortcut the process in a way that creates bigger problems down the road. Rushing to get a certification from an auditor that isn't rigorous, templatizing policies without ensuring the controls behind them are real, marking things as compliant because the platform says so — those paths lead to programs built on a foundation that doesn't hold up when a serious enterprise buyer looks closely.
If you're trying to estimate how long your certification will realistically take, the most important variables are:
The size and complexity of your organization. More people, more systems, more integrations in scope means more surface area to assess and more controls to implement or verify.
What you already have in place. Teams that have been thinking about security from the start — even informally — tend to have fewer gaps to close. Teams that have been heads-down on product with zero compliance infrastructure need to build everything from zero.
How fast your team can move. Compliance work competes with everything else. The companies that get certified fastest are the ones that treat it like a product sprint and give it the attention it needs for the duration.
The frameworks in scope. A straight SOC 2 Type I is the simplest scenario. Add Type II, layer in ISO 27001 or GDPR, and the complexity — and the timeline — grows accordingly.
The fastest path to a credible SOC 2 certification isn't the fastest path to any SOC 2 certification. A report issued in thirty days by a firm that isn't looking closely at your controls isn't an asset — it's a liability that surfaces at the worst possible moment, when a real enterprise buyer does their due diligence on both the report and the auditor.
The companies that get the most value out of the certification are the ones that build the program correctly from the start, with controls that are real and evidence that holds up. That might take longer than you want it to. But it's the version that actually closes deals.
.svg)
