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These days even seed stage startups seem to be waving their SOC2 Type II like Charlie waved around his golden ticket in Willy Wonka.

Sure, SOC2 reports (when done well), certainly goes a long way towards unlocking the 6-7 figure sales. However, these days the market is so full of compliance automation and AI tools that it’s hard to see what actually works.

The landscape

Let me paint you a picture.

Cyber attacks killing startups before it’s even had a chance to take off from the runway and find its product market fit. Hell, there’s enterprises and global companies like Jaguar Land Rover that’s been brought to its knees, bleeding millions a day, to survive and come back from an attack that started off with a simple password reset request.

On the other hand, we have a horde of internet pundits and vCISOs and ‘security experts’ who feed on these attacks. They fuel the fire by blaming the security functions, the vendors, and the tools, touting that their tool/services/certifications are the solution to your security woes.

If only one could buy themselves that peace of mind, eh?

And there’s you have it. Hook, line, and sinker.

Any sane founder would want to know that they’re protected against the big bad cyber uglies out there in the dark side of the web. We know that reputation matters, and compromised sensitive information has the power to bury your baby bird of a start up before it’s had a chance to take off. After all, who’d want to sign up to an app/service/tool where their data couldn’t be trusted?

2025 provided ample fodder by way of cyber attacks and incidents like never before. From retail chains in Easter, to car manufacturers, and even Google (supply chain), this was the year that kept on giving in terms of scary stories to fuel the marketing for the cyber vendors around the world.

In an industry worth $212 billion today, with 14% CAGR, it pays to keep everyone in fear of an attack. Fear that it’s the Cybersecurity/ IT director’s position at risk when something DOES go wrong (trust me, things go wrong all the time). The budget owner now has money to spend on their ‘must have’ tool that will do a combination of acronyms that sound more made up than those that come after the title of the said director. EDR/XDR/SIEM/SOAR/CSPM against CISSP,CRISC,CISM,CSSP. Acronym speaking to acronym, the more you have, the better it is right?

Side note:

As a startup it’s also inevitable you’re working against nonexistent budgets that counts for ‘must have’s only, and I’ve assumed that hardly any of the services you buy would be on a typical ‘enterprise’ plan or equivalent.

While enterprise plans give customers the added security and data privacy features (another rant for another time), I’ve written below on the basis that works for anyone.

The harsh truth about what gets breached

What actually gets breached at your organisation isn’t going to be the sophisticated APT by a nation-state gang who’s there to get your IP and or data, it’s more likely that you’ve set things up in a way that makes it easy for your systems to be breached.

Here’s what actually gets breached:

1. Misconfigured Cloud storage
2. Credentials
3. Vendors you’ve integrated with
4. Disgruntled ex- employee

These can lead to a range of attacks (let’s forget who does this for a second), ranging from phishing to ransomware (following the cyber kill chain) and blackmail or public disclosures causing your reputation to tank, and have regulators knocking at your door.

More often than not, we think security can be thought through when there’s more resources, or more money. When the PMF is achieved, and you have an MVP. But by pushing security to a later stage, you’re doubling your costs to implement basic best practices.

So what does a startup actually need?

When it comes down to it, the age old advice of protecting the Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability still holds true, like a pyramid balancing the tools and attacks stacking up like a house of cards.

That being said, there are a few fundamentals that, when done right, give you a solid foundation that can stand true, even when you’re on your 5th DevOps hire, or going for SOC2 Type II for that first enterprise client.

These controls gives you enough to not get wrecked, attract larger clients in B2B, and pass basic due diligence.

Don’t let your security controls be part of the ‘legacy’ code you end up griping about down the line.

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