What is the best SOC 2 compliance software?

The best SOC 2 compliance software depends on your existing security infrastructure. Companies with mature IT and security teams may benefit from GRC platforms such as Vanta or Drata, which automate evidence collection and audit management. Organizations without an existing security stack may need a managed platform that also provides endpoint management, security monitoring, vulnerability management, remediation, and other underlying capabilities.

Is Vanta enough for SOC 2 compliance?

Vanta can automate a significant portion of SOC 2 compliance management and evidence collection. However, Vanta generally relies on integrations with existing systems such as your identity provider, cloud environment, endpoint-management platform, ticketing system, and security tools. Those underlying systems still need to be configured and operated effectively.

Is Drata enough for SOC 2?

Drata provides strong compliance automation, continuous monitoring, and audit workflows. Like most GRC platforms, however, it does not eliminate the need for the security infrastructure and operational processes responsible for implementing technical controls.

What tools do I need for SOC 2 compliance?

The exact SOC 2 tool stack depends on your environment and controls, but organizations commonly use GRC/compliance automation, MDM, EDR, SIEM/log management, identity and access management, ticketing/change management, vulnerability scanning, and penetration testing. The larger challenge is often not purchasing these systems but properly configuring, monitoring, and operating them.

How much does SOC 2 compliance software cost?

GRC platforms alone commonly cost approximately $10,000 to $25,000 per year. Once endpoint management, EDR, SIEM, vulnerability management, penetration testing, and other security systems are included, the broader security stack can cost approximately $50,000 to $150,000+ per year before internal labor. SOC 2 auditor fees can add another $15,000 to $50,000 for a Type II engagement. Organizations should therefore compare total cost of compliance rather than GRC subscription prices alone.

What's the difference between GRC software and managed SOC 2 compliance?

GRC software primarily helps organizations organize controls, collect evidence, monitor compliance status, and coordinate audits. A managed SOC 2 service also helps operate the systems responsible for implementing those controls. The practical difference is remediation: with traditional GRC software, your team generally acts on the findings, while with a managed service, the provider can take responsibility for operating and remediating parts of the underlying environment.

How long does SOC 2 compliance take?

SOC 2 Type I is a point-in-time assessment and can typically be completed faster than Type II. SOC 2 Type II evaluates controls over an observation period, which means organizations need to maintain and document controls consistently over time. The biggest variable is often not the audit itself but how quickly the underlying security controls can be implemented and made operational.

Can one platform manage SOC 2, CMMC, and ISO 27001?

Many GRC platforms provide multi-framework mapping, allowing evidence and controls to be reused across SOC 2, ISO 27001, CMMC, and other frameworks. However, mapping controls does not necessarily implement them. Espresso Labs supports SOC 2, CMMC, and ISO 27001 while also managing many of the underlying technical security controls, allowing implementation work and evidence to carry across frameworks where requirements overlap.

9 Best SOC 2 Compliance Software Tools in 2026 (And What They're Missing)

Choosing the best SOC 2 compliance software is more complicated than comparing dashboards.

Most organizations start by evaluating GRC and compliance automation platforms like Vanta, Drata, Sprinto, or Secureframe. These tools can help simplify SOC 2 readiness by mapping controls, collecting evidence, tracking gaps, and coordinating with auditors.

But there is a second layer that often gets overlooked.

A SOC 2 compliance platform generally does not replace the security infrastructure required to implement the controls it monitors. Organizations may still need endpoint management, EDR, SIEM, vulnerability scanning, ticketing, penetration testing, identity management, and people capable of configuring and operating those systems.

That distinction becomes especially important during a SOC 2 Type II audit.

You can have a compliance dashboard full of green checkmarks and still run into problems when an auditor asks for six months of evidence showing that disk encryption was continuously enforced, security alerts were investigated, vulnerabilities were remediated, and access changes were properly documented.

The best SOC 2 compliance software therefore depends on what you actually need:

A GRC platform that organizes and monitors an existing security program
Individual security tools that implement specific technical controls
An IT team or MSP that implements and operates the technical systems required to satisfy those controls

This guide compares all three approaches.

What SOC 2 Actually Requires From Your Technology Stack

SOC 2 is based on the AICPA Trust Services Criteria:

Security
Availability
Confidentiality
Processing Integrity
Privacy

Security, commonly represented through the Common Criteria or CC controls, is the foundation of a SOC 2 engagement. Organizations may also include the additional Trust Services Criteria depending on their services and customer requirements.

Even when focusing primarily on Security, organizations usually need evidence from several different parts of their technology environment.

Common SOC 2 security tools include the seven categories below. Click each one to see what auditors typically expect from it.

The important point is that SOC 2 compliance software does not necessarily provide all of these capabilities itself.

That leads to the first major category of SOC 2 software.

Best GRC and SOC 2 Compliance Automation Platforms

GRC platforms are where most organizations begin their SOC 2 journey.

They automate evidence collection, map evidence to controls, identify compliance gaps, manage policies, and help coordinate the audit process.

These platforms can save enormous amounts of manual compliance work.

But they are primarily the compliance management layer.

They generally depend on integrations with the security and IT systems your organization already operates.

Click each platform to see its strengths, and where it stops.

The Limitation of GRC Platforms

The limitation isn’t that GRC platforms are bad.

They’re extremely useful.

The issue is misunderstanding what they do.

A GRC platform can tell you that a control is failing.

It generally does not become your:

IT administrator
Security analyst
SOC
MDM administrator
Vulnerability management team
Incident response team

That distinction matters because auditors ultimately care about whether controls are operating effectively, not whether a dashboard can display them.

Imagine spending three months getting your compliance dashboard green.

Then the auditor asks:

Show me that encryption was enforced across every endpoint throughout the audit period.

Or:

Show me every critical vulnerability discovered during the period and evidence that each was remediated.

Or:

Show me how security alerts were investigated.

If the systems underneath the dashboard were not configured and operated properly, the compliance platform cannot manufacture that evidence afterward.

The dashboard didn’t fail.

The stack underneath it did.

And that brings us to the second major category of SOC 2 tools.

The Individual Security Tools Behind SOC 2 Compliance

Organizations using Vanta, Drata, Sprinto, Secureframe, or another GRC platform commonly need several additional security products spanning MDM, EDR, SIEM, ticketing, vulnerability management, and penetration testing.

And buying the tools is only part of the problem.

Someone needs to configure and operate them.

Click each category to see where it typically runs into operational limits.

This is where many SOC 2 programs become operationally difficult.

How to Evaluate SOC 2 Compliance Software

Before choosing a platform, ask five questions.

1. Does It Integrate With Your Security Stack, or Replace Parts of It?

Most GRC platforms integrate with tools you already operate.

That works well if those systems are already deployed and properly managed.

If they aren’t, integrations alone don’t solve the problem.

2. Who Fixes a Failed Control?

Imagine your compliance platform reports:

Five employee computers are missing disk encryption.

Who fixes them?

Or your vulnerability scanner detects a critical vulnerability.

Who patches it?

Or your SIEM generates a suspicious-login alert.

Who investigates it?

If the answer is your team, make sure you actually have one.

3. Does It Support Continuous Compliance?

SOC 2 Type II is about controls operating over a period of time.

That means organizations need more than point-in-time screenshots.

The underlying controls should operate continuously, and the corresponding evidence needs to remain available throughout the audit period.

4. Can It Support Additional Compliance Frameworks?

Many companies pursuing SOC 2 later encounter requirements such as:

ISO 27001
CMMC
HIPAA
PCI DSS

Platforms that support cross-framework mapping can reduce duplicated compliance work.

5. What Is the Total Cost of Ownership?

Calculate more than the software subscription.

Include:

GRC software
Security tools
IT administration
Security monitoring
Consulting
Penetration testing
Auditor fees
Employee time

The GRC platform may end up being one of the smallest expenses in the entire program.

GRC Platform vs. Building Your Own SOC 2 Security Stack

A traditional SOC 2 architecture often looks like this:

📊

GRC Platform

Vanta, Drata, Sprinto, Secureframe, or similar

Tracks controls, evidence, and audit progress

🧩

MDM + EDR + SIEM + Vulnerability Scanner + Ticketing + Identity + Pen Testing

Implements the individual technical controls

👥

Internal IT + Security + Compliance Team

Configures, operates, and monitors everything above

For larger organizations, this model can make perfect sense.

They already have security teams and technology infrastructure. Adding Vanta or Drata can significantly improve compliance visibility and reduce manual evidence collection.

But smaller companies often find themselves in a different situation.

They buy the GRC platform first.

Then they discover they need MDM.

Then EDR.

Then vulnerability scanning.

Then security monitoring.

Then someone to respond to all of those systems.

What initially looked like purchasing one SOC 2 compliance platform becomes an entire security program.

There is another approach.

Espresso Labs: SOC 2 Compliance Without Building the Entire Stack Yourself

Espresso Labs takes a fundamentally different approach to SOC 2 compliance software.

Instead of sitting above your security stack and monitoring it, Espresso Labs combines the compliance platform with the underlying security operations required to implement many of the controls.

The result is an AI-powered managed cybersecurity and compliance platform that brings multiple parts of the SOC 2 stack together.

Rather than:

GRC + MDM + EDR + SIEM + vulnerability scanner + ticketing + security team

Espresso Labs provides those capabilities as a consolidated managed service.

What Espresso Labs Includes

Espresso Labs combines:

GRC and Compliance Management

Manage:

SOC 2 controls
Policies
Evidence
Findings
Responsibilities
Audit readiness

Controls map directly to the systems responsible for implementing them.

MDM and Endpoint Management

Manage and enforce endpoint requirements including:

Disk encryption
Security settings
Device inventory
Patch management
Compliance policies

EDR and Endpoint Security

Monitor endpoints for:

Malware
Suspicious processes
Threat activity
Security events

24/7 SIEM and Security Monitoring

Centralize relevant security telemetry and continuously monitor the environment instead of simply collecting logs for an auditor.

Vulnerability Management

Identify vulnerabilities and manage the complete remediation workflow from discovery through closure.

Ticketing and Change Management

Security and compliance findings can automatically become tracked remediation activities rather than items sitting indefinitely on a dashboard.

Penetration Testing Coordination

Manage penetration-testing requirements and ensure findings move into tracked remediation workflows.

From Compliance Tracking to Compliance Execution

This is the fundamental difference between Espresso Labs and traditional GRC software.

A traditional compliance platform might identify:

Endpoint encryption is not enabled.

Espresso Labs can manage the endpoint controls responsible for enforcing encryption.

A traditional platform might identify:

A critical vulnerability remains open.

Espresso Labs manages the remediation process.

A traditional platform might report:

A security alert was generated.

Espresso Labs provides the monitoring capability required to investigate and respond.

The goal isn’t merely to make a SOC 2 dashboard green.

The goal is to make the underlying environment compliant.

Policies Connected Directly to Technical Controls

Another difference is the relationship between compliance policies and actual implementation.

Traditional compliance programs often contain a disconnect between the two.

A policy might say:

Company-managed endpoints must use full-disk encryption.

Then someone has to separately translate that requirement into:

MDM configuration
Deployment policies
Exception workflows
Monitoring
Evidence collection

Espresso Labs maps policies and controls directly to automated playbooks wherever possible.

Those playbooks can:

Enforce configurations
Monitor controls
Detect deviations
Trigger remediation
Collect evidence

Instead of compliance documentation describing what should happen while separate systems determine what actually happens, the two layers become part of the same operating model.

Continuous SOC 2 Evidence Collection

SOC 2 Type II requires organizations to demonstrate that controls operated throughout the audit period.

That makes continuous evidence collection particularly important.

Espresso Labs continuously connects technical control execution with corresponding compliance evidence.

For example:

Control: Company endpoints must use disk encryption.

Implementation: Endpoint management enforces encryption.

Monitoring: Devices are continuously checked for compliance.

Remediation: Non-compliant devices trigger action.

Evidence: Compliance status is retained for audit purposes.

The evidence isn’t assembled manually six months later.

It is generated as the control operates.

Where AI and Automation Actually Do the Heavy Lifting

Most of the “AI” marketing in the GRC space is about making the tracking layer faster: auto-drafting policy language, summarizing evidence for an auditor, or answering questions about your control status in a chat window. That’s useful, but it doesn’t touch the actual operational work.

The heavy lifting behind SOC 2 is the workload the sections above already described: enrolling and patching every device MDM should be managing, triaging the EDR and SIEM alerts flowing in continuously, closing the vulnerability findings piling up in a scanner, and updating access every time someone joins, changes roles, or leaves. Historically, someone has had to do all of that by hand, tool by tool.

Where Espresso Labs Is Different

Espresso Labs applies AI and automation to that operational layer directly, not just to the reporting layer sitting on top of it.

Continuous monitoring and triage: AI correlates signals across endpoints, cloud environments, and logs to separate real issues from noise, instead of a person scanning every alert by hand.
Automated remediation: Common issues, like missing disk encryption, a stalled patch, or a risky access grant, can be corrected automatically through playbooks rather than sitting in a ticket queue.
Evidence generated by the system doing the work: Because the automation is what enforces the control, the evidence trail is a byproduct of that enforcement, not a separate step someone performs before an audit.
Human review where it matters: Engineers and analysts focus on exceptions, ambiguous alerts, and decisions that require real judgment, instead of repetitive configuration and ticket triage.

Other platforms can tell you which controls are failing. Espresso Labs is built to fix them, automatically wherever possible, so the months of evidence a Type II audit requires is generated continuously as a byproduct of how the environment actually runs, rather than assembled after the fact.

That same automated operations layer carries over to other frameworks Espresso Labs supports, including CMMC and ISO 27001, so the operational work doesn’t have to be rebuilt from scratch for every new certification.

Which SOC 2 Compliance Software Should You Choose?

There is no single answer for every organization.

Choose Vanta, Drata, Sprinto, Secureframe, or another GRC platform if:

You already have a mature security stack
Your endpoints are already managed
You already have EDR
Security logs are monitored
Vulnerabilities have an established remediation process
You have internal IT and security personnel
Your primary problem is organizing compliance evidence

These platforms can be excellent compliance-management layers.

Build an individual security stack if:

You have experienced security engineers
You want to select best-of-breed products independently
You have the resources to integrate and operate multiple systems
You want maximum control over architecture

This approach provides flexibility but comes with greater operational complexity.

Consider Espresso Labs if:

You need SOC 2 but don’t want to build an internal security organization
You don’t already operate the required security stack
You want fewer individual vendors
You want technical controls and compliance evidence managed together
You need ongoing remediation rather than another dashboard showing what needs to be fixed
You may eventually need SOC 2, CMMC, or ISO 27001

The important distinction is simple:

GRC software helps you manage compliance.

Security tools help you implement individual controls.

Espresso Labs is designed to manage both.

The Bottom Line

SOC 2 isn’t ultimately a dashboard problem.

It’s an operational security problem.

GRC platforms such as Vanta, Drata, Sprinto, Secureframe, and Scytale can help simplify compliance management and evidence collection.

Individual products such as Jamf, Intune, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Splunk, Tenable, and Qualys can implement critical parts of the underlying security program.

But someone still has to connect everything, configure it, monitor it, remediate problems, and continuously produce evidence.

For organizations with large IT and security teams, assembling that stack internally may make perfect sense.

For organizations that don’t want to hire an entire security function just to achieve SOC 2, Espresso Labs provides a different model.

One platform. One managed service. GRC, endpoint security, monitoring, vulnerability management, remediation, and continuous compliance evidence working together.

Instead of simply tracking compliance gaps, Espresso Labs is designed to help close them.