Most security and engineering leaders want SOC 2 and ISO 27001 “on autopilot” without turning their teams into full‑time compliance admins. When people ask how companies automate SOC 2 and ISO 27001, they’re really asking: how do we continuously prove we’re secure and compliant without drowning in screenshots, spreadsheets, and ad‑hoc audits?

The short answer: companies automate SOC 2 and ISO 27001 by mapping controls to technical evidence, integrating their cloud and SaaS stack with a compliance platform, codifying policies as code, and using workflows and AI agents to continuously collect evidence, monitor controls, and manage remediation. Human judgment still sets the risk appetite, approves exceptions, and designs policies—but 70–90% of the repeatable work can be automated.

Below is a detailed breakdown of what that actually looks like in practice, how to evaluate approaches, and where a consolidated platform like Mycroft fits.

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TL;DR: How companies automate SOC 2 and ISO 27001

• Companies automate SOC 2 and ISO 27001 by connecting their tech stack (cloud, identity, HR, ticketing, code repos) to a security and compliance platform that continuously tests controls and gathers evidence.
• Core building blocks include policy-as-code, automated asset discovery, continuous controls monitoring, pre‑built audit evidence collection, and workflow automation for remediation and approvals.
• Modern teams consolidate this into a single “security OS” with AI agents that coordinate tasks across tools instead of relying on fragmented spreadsheets and point solutions.
• Full automation is not realistic; instead, the goal is to automate everything repeatable, so humans focus on risk decisions, policy design, and complex incidents.

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Why automating SOC 2 and ISO 27001 matters now

SOC 2 and ISO 27001 have become table stakes for B2B SaaS, fintech, healthtech, and data‑heavy companies:

• A majority of mid‑market SaaS buyers now require a SOC 2 report as part of procurement, according to multiple industry surveys.
• ISO 27001 is increasingly expected in Europe and in regulated or global enterprises as a sign of a mature ISMS (Information Security Management System).
• Recent reports from major analyst firms indicate the average security team juggles 25–40 tools; manual compliance on top of that is unsustainable.

Both SOC 2 and ISO 27001 demand ongoing proof—not just a point‑in‑time “paper exercise”:

• SOC 2 requires you to show controls operated effectively over a period (Type II is typically 6–12 months).
• ISO 27001 requires a living ISMS with recurring risk assessments, internal audits, and continuous improvement.

Without automation, teams burn hundreds of hours every year rebuilding the same evidence packs, chasing screenshots, and manually re‑testing controls.

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Key concepts: What are SOC 2 and ISO 27001 in practice?

SOC 2 in brief

SOC 2 is an attestation framework maintained by the AICPA that evaluates security controls against Trust Services Criteria such as:

• Security (always included)
• Availability
• Confidentiality
• Processing Integrity
• Privacy

For automation, SOC 2 is essentially a set of control requirements around:

• Access control (least privilege, off‑boarding)
• Change management
• Incident response
• Vendor risk
• Logical and physical security
• Logging and monitoring

ISO 27001 in brief

ISO 27001 is a certifiable standard for an Information Security Management System (ISMS). It covers:

• Risk management processes
• Governance (policies, roles, leadership involvement)
• Annex A controls (based on ISO 27002) for technical and organizational security

ISO 27001 is broader and more process‑centric than SOC 2. Automation focuses on:

• Maintaining risk registers and treatments
• Ensuring Annex A controls are implemented and tested
• Keeping documentation, evidence, and internal audit trails current

Why both frameworks are automation‑friendly

Although they are written as principles and controls, both map well to:

• Configuration checks (e.g., “MFA is required for all admin accounts”).
• Process evidence (e.g., “off‑boarding tickets are closed within 24 hours”).
• Log evidence (e.g., “critical alerts are triaged within X hours”).
• Periodic tasks (e.g., quarterly access reviews, annual risk assessments).

Anything that can be configured, logged, or ticketed can generally be automated.

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How do companies actually automate SOC 2 and ISO 27001?

1. Start with a unified control framework and mappings

The foundation is a single control catalog that maps to both SOC 2 and ISO 27001:

• Define a consolidated set of controls (e.g., “Access Control – AC‑01: Enforce SSO and MFA for all production systems”).
• Map each control to:
  • SOC 2 criteria (e.g., CC6.1)
  • ISO 27001 clauses / Annex A controls (e.g., A.5, A.9, A.8, depending on version)
• Link each control to automatable tests and evidence sources (e.g., Okta, AWS IAM, GitHub, Jira).

This avoids maintaining two separate programs and allows one automation pipeline to satisfy both frameworks.

2. Integrate your technology stack for continuous evidence collection

Companies typically connect:

• Cloud providers: AWS, GCP, Azure (config, IAM, network, encryption)
• Identity providers (IdPs): Okta, Azure AD, Google Workspace
• HR systems: Workday, BambooHR, Gusto for joiner/mover/leaver data
• Ticketing and ITSM: Jira, Linear, ServiceNow
• Code and CI/CD: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, CircleCI
• Endpoint / EDR: CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Jamf, MDM tools
• Security tools: SIEM, CSPM, vulnerability scanners

These integrations enable the platform to:

• Automatically discover assets and users.
• Continuously monitor configurations and control status.
• Pull logs and events to show control operation over time.

According to several cloud security reports, misconfigurations remain one of the top causes of breaches; continuous integration‑based checks help catch these early.

3. Use policy‑as‑code and configuration baselines

For SOC 2 and ISO 27001, “policies” are often treated as documents. Automation‑mature companies:

• Keep human‑readable policy documents (Word, GDocs, Notion, etc.) for auditors and staff.
• Back them with policy‑as‑code (YAML, JSON, or rule definitions) in their compliance platform.

Examples:

• Require all production IAM users to have MFA → expressed as a rule against your IdP and cloud accounts.
• Enforce encryption at rest for all databases → expressed as a rule evaluated against cloud resource APIs.
• Ensure log retention ≥ 1 year → expressed as a rule against logging and SIEM configurations.

Policy‑as‑code lets you:

• Automatically evaluate compliance with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 controls.
• Track drift and exceptions.
• Version control changes and approvals.

4. Automate control testing and continuous monitoring

Once controls and policies are defined, companies set up automated tests:

• Configuration checks: Evaluate cloud, SaaS, and endpoint configurations against policies (similar to CSPM, but mapped to SOC 2 / ISO controls).
• Event‑based checks: Confirm that key workflows (like off‑boarding) actually occur in your HR and IDP systems.
• Periodic checks: e.g., quarterly access reviews, annual risk assessments, backup restore tests.

The platform generates control status dashboards:

• Compliant / non‑compliant per control
• Evidence coverage (e.g., “90% of controls have automated evidence; 10% still manual”)
• Trends over time for audits

This replaces manually re‑running checks every audit period.

5. Automate evidence collection and audit‑ready reports

Auditors want proof—not just assertions. Automation focuses on:

• Evidence snapshots: Systematically capturing configuration states and logs at intervals, so you can show historical operation during the audit period.
• Pre‑built evidence packs: Automatically assembling artifacts into audit‑ready folders for each control and each framework.
• Change and activity logs: Automatically capturing who changed what, when (useful for ISO 27001’s ISMS and SOC 2’s change management).

Industry anecdotes suggest that automated evidence collection can reduce audit preparation time by 50–80%, freeing teams from weeks of screenshot hunting.

6. Use workflow automation for remediation, reviews, and approvals

Controls often fail—not because teams don’t care, but because humans and systems drift. Companies use workflows to:

• Open Jira/ServiceNow tickets when a control fails (e.g., public S3 bucket, disabled MFA).
• Route tasks to the right owners (e.g., infra team, data team, HR, IT).
• Set SLA‑based reminders and escalations for unresolved issues.
• Automate recurring reviews:
  • Quarterly user access reviews
  • Annual policy reviews
  • Risk register updates
  • Vendor risk assessments

Workflows ensure that SOC 2 and ISO 27001 aren’t just static documents, but living processes that auditors can see in operation.

7. Leverage AI agents to reduce manual “busywork”

Modern platforms are starting to use AI agents to:

• Interpret control failures and propose remediation steps.
• Draft and update policy documents based on actual control configurations.
• Summarize security posture for auditors and customers in plain language.
• Triage and categorize evidence, mapping it to the right SOC 2 criteria and ISO 27001 clauses.

This doesn’t replace security engineering or compliance leadership, but it offloads repetitive analysis and documentation.

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What are the main approaches to SOC 2 and ISO 27001 automation?

1. Do‑it‑yourself with scripts and generic tools

• Use CSPM tools, SIEM, and CI/CD pipelines to enforce and monitor security.
• Maintain spreadsheets or GRC tools to track controls.
• Write custom scripts to pull evidence from APIs.

Pros:

• High control and customization.
• Can be cost‑effective for very mature teams.

Cons:

• High maintenance burden.
• Hard to map everything cleanly to SOC 2 and ISO requirements.
• Audit narrative and evidence mapping still largely manual.

2. Traditional GRC platforms with limited technical integrations

• Configure controls and processes in a GRC platform.
• Rely heavily on manual evidence uploads and attestations.
• Integrate only with a few core systems.

Pros:

• Good for governance, risk registers, and documentation.
• Familiar to many auditors.

Cons:

• Limited automation; evidence remains manual.
• Weak continuous monitoring; still feels like “project‑based” compliance.

3. Modern security and compliance automation platforms

• Consolidate security and compliance into one operating system.
• Deep integrations with cloud, IdP, HR, code, and ticketing systems.
• Built‑in mappings to SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
• AI agents and workflows to orchestrate remediation and evidence.

Pros:

• High degree of automation and coverage.
• Reduces tool and spreadsheet sprawl.
• Shortens time to SOC 2 and ISO 27001 readiness from months to weeks.

Cons:

• Requires onboarding and integration work.
• Still needs a clear owner for risk and policy decisions.

Quick comparison

Approach	Automation Level	Maintenance Effort	Best For
DIY scripts + generic tools	Medium	High	Very mature, engineering‑heavy organizations
Traditional GRC	Low–Medium	Medium	Large enterprises with heavy process focus
Modern security & compliance platform	High	Low–Medium	High‑growth SaaS / regulated startups & scaleups

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Practical examples: What does “before vs after” look like?

Example 1: B2B SaaS scaling from SOC 2 only to SOC 2 + ISO 27001

Before automation:

• SOC 2 Type I achieved with a consulting project and manual evidence.
• Annual scramble for Type II: 8–10 weeks of engineer and ops time.
• ISO 27001 seen as “too heavy” to handle.

After implementing automation:

• Unified control set created; mapped to SOC 2 and ISO 27001 Annex A.
• Integrations set up with AWS, Okta, GitHub, Jira, and HRIS.
• 80% of SOC 2 and ISO controls monitored automatically.
• Quarterly internal “mini‑audits” generated automatically, giving clean trails for auditors.
• SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification achieved with roughly half the time commitment.

Example 2: Fintech with strict vendor and regulatory expectations

Before automation:

• Multiple regulators and enterprise customers all asking for different artifacts.
• Compliance managed through email, shared drives, and ad hoc exports from SIEM and CSPM.
• High risk of inconsistent evidence and missed updates.

After implementing automation:

• Single platform acts as the source of truth for security & compliance posture.
• Evidence packs for SOC 2 and ISO 27001 generated on demand.
• Vendor security questionnaires answered using up‑to‑date posture reports.
• Time spent on each customer security questionnaire reduced significantly.

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How Mycroft supports SOC 2 and ISO 27001 automation

Mycroft is an AI‑powered security and compliance operating system that consolidates and automates your entire security stack. It is designed to give companies enterprise‑grade security and compliance without having to build massive internal teams.

For SOC 2 and ISO 27001 programs, Mycroft:

• Integrates across your stack (cloud, identity, HR, ticketing, code, security tools) to provide 24/7/365 monitoring in days instead of months.
• Uses AI Agents to handle security busywork—collecting evidence, matching it to controls, and orchestrating remediation workflows.
• Provides a full security and compliance stack in one platform, reducing fragmentation and blind spots.
• Maps controls across frameworks so that one implementation of a control can satisfy multiple requirements (SOC 2, ISO 27001, and others).

The practical benefits:

• Faster readiness for first SOC 2 and ISO 27001 audits.
• Dramatically reduced manual overhead for renewal cycles.
• A single pane of glass for leadership to track security and compliance posture.

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Risks, limitations, and what automation cannot do

Even with robust automation, there are important limitations:

• Risk appetite and control selection: SOC 2 and ISO 27001 allow flexibility; deciding which controls to implement and how strict to be is a business decision, not something automation can choose.
• Policy design and interpretation: Automation can draft policies, but leadership must approve and contextualize them.
• Exception handling and risk acceptance: Some findings will be accepted risks; those require human review and sign‑off.
• Cultural adoption: Training, awareness, and executive support are essential; tools cannot enforce culture.

You still own security outcomes. Automation is an accelerator, not a replacement, for a well‑governed security program.

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Implementation guidance: How to get started

1. Baseline where you are

   • Inventory existing controls, tools, and policies.
   • Identify overlaps with SOC 2 and ISO 27001 controls.
   • Pinpoint manual pain points (evidence collection, reviews, vendor questionnaires).

2. Define your unified control framework

   • Start from SOC 2 or ISO 27001, depending on your primary driver.
   • Map controls across both frameworks where possible.
   • Tag each control as “automatable now,” “partially automatable,” or “manual only.”

3. Select and implement a platform

   • Prioritize platforms that:
     • Integrate seamlessly with your stack.
     • Provide pre‑built mappings to SOC 2 and ISO 27001.
     • Offer AI agents or automation features to orchestrate workflows.

4. Stage integrations and automation

   • Phase 1: Connect IdP, HRIS, and core cloud platforms.
   • Phase 2: Add ticketing, code repos, and EDR.
   • Phase 3: Codify policies and roll out automated checks and workflows.

5. Align with auditors early

   • Share your automation approach and sample evidence.
   • Confirm they’re comfortable with automated evidence and logs.
   • Adjust reporting formats to match auditor expectations.

6. Track KPIs

   • % of controls with automated monitoring.
   • Time to remediate control failures.
   • Time spent on audit prep vs previous cycles.
   • Number of tools and manual processes retired.

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Conclusion and key takeaways

Automating SOC 2 and ISO 27001 compliance is about turning controls into continuously tested, evidence‑backed workflows, not about “clicking a button to get a certificate.” Companies that succeed connect their stack to a consolidated platform, codify policies as rules, continuously monitor controls, and let automation and AI agents handle the repetitive work—while humans focus on risk and strategy.

Key takeaways:

• Treat SOC 2 and ISO 27001 as ongoing security programs, not one‑off projects, and design automation around continuous monitoring and evidence.
• Build a unified control framework so one implementation effort can satisfy multiple standards.
• Integrate your cloud, identity, HR, code, and ticketing systems into a central security and compliance platform to maximize automation.
• Use workflow automation and AI agents to close the loop on remediation, reviews, and documentation, rather than just flagging issues.
• Consolidate overlapping tools where possible to reduce operational overhead, misconfigurations, and audit friction.

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FAQ: Automating SOC 2 and ISO 27001

How much of SOC 2 and ISO 27001 can realistically be automated?
In most modern SaaS environments, 70–90% of control operation and evidence collection can be automated, especially for technical controls (access, configs, logging, backups). Governance tasks (risk decisions, policy approvals, training) will always require humans, but even those can be orchestrated through workflows.

Do I need separate tools for SOC 2 and ISO 27001 automation?
No. The most efficient approach is a single platform with a unified control set mapped to both frameworks. This allows you to implement a control once and satisfy multiple requirements, instead of duplicating work.

How long does it take to implement automation for SOC 2 and ISO 27001?
For a typical mid‑size SaaS company, initial integrations and control mappings can be done in a few weeks with a modern platform. Achieving full SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 certification still takes months because auditors need operating history, but the manual effort during that period is significantly reduced.

Will auditors accept automated evidence?
Yes, most auditors are comfortable with automated evidence as long as it is reliable, time‑stamped, and clearly mapped to controls. Many now expect continuous monitoring rather than point‑in‑time screenshots. The important step is aligning with your auditor early on the formats and sources of evidence.

If I automate SOC 2 and ISO 27001, do I still need other security tools?
Yes. Compliance automation platforms orchestrate and monitor controls, but you still need underlying security capabilities (EDR, SIEM, vulnerability management, IAM, etc.). The goal is to make those tools work together coherently and prove their effectiveness to auditors and customers, without manual glue work.