Your Auditor Matters More Than You Think
Choosing a SOC 2 auditor feels like a procurement exercise: get some quotes, compare timelines, pick the cheapest or fastest option. That approach almost always leads to regret.
Your auditor determines the quality of your report, the difficulty of your audit process, and whether your customers actually trust the result. A good auditor makes the process efficient and educational. A bad one creates unnecessary friction, asks for evidence that doesn’t make sense for your environment, and produces a report that raises more questions than it answers.
What Makes a Firm Eligible
Only licensed CPA firms can perform SOC 2 audits. The firm must be a member of the AICPA and comply with professional standards for attestation engagements. Individual auditors within the firm need relevant experience and ongoing professional education.
That said, being a licensed CPA firm is a minimum threshold, not a quality indicator. There’s enormous variation in quality, expertise, and approach among the hundreds of firms that perform SOC 2 audits.
What to Look For
SaaS and Cloud Experience
This is the single most important factor. An auditor who primarily serves on-premise enterprises will ask for evidence that doesn’t map to your environment. They’ll want to see server room access logs when your infrastructure is entirely in AWS. They’ll ask about physical media disposal when you’ve never had a physical server.
Ask specific questions: How many SaaS companies have you audited? What cloud platforms are you familiar with? Can you give examples of how you’ve evaluated controls in a CI/CD environment?
Reasonable Scope and Approach
During the scoping process, pay attention to how the auditor defines your system and control environment. A good auditor will work with you to scope appropriately, focusing on the systems and processes that are relevant to the Trust Services Criteria. A problematic auditor will over-scope, pulling in every system and every employee into the audit.
Clear Communication
You should understand what the auditor needs, when they need it, and why. If the evidence request list is vague, the communication is infrequent, or you can’t get straight answers about timeline and expectations, those problems will only get worse during the audit.
Report Quality
Ask for a sample report (redacted). Read it. A good SOC 2 report clearly describes the system, the controls, and the test results. Your customers will read this report during procurement. If it’s confusing, overly generic, or poorly written, it undermines the credibility you’re trying to build.
Reasonable Pricing
SOC 2 audit fees for SaaS companies typically range from $20K to $60K for a Type II, depending on scope, complexity, and the firm’s reputation. Significantly below that range should raise questions about quality and thoroughness. Significantly above it may reflect a firm that’s over-scoping or not right-sized for your organization.
What to Avoid
Firms That Don’t Understand Modern Infrastructure
If the auditor asks you to print screenshots as evidence, wants to schedule on-site visits to inspect your “data center” (which is an AWS region), or doesn’t understand what Terraform is, they’re not the right fit for a cloud-native SaaS company.
Firms That Over-Scope
Some auditors expand scope to justify higher fees. If an auditor insists that your marketing website, every SaaS tool your company uses, and every employee’s personal device are in scope, push back. The scope should be your product, the infrastructure supporting it, and the people and processes that directly affect its security.
Firms That Rubber-Stamp
An auditor that never pushes back, never asks hard questions, and guarantees a clean report before the audit starts isn’t doing their job. A SOC 2 report from a rubber-stamp firm is worth less to your customers than no report at all, because sophisticated buyers recognize low-quality audits.
Firms With Conflicts of Interest
Be cautious of firms that offer both consulting and audit services. A firm that implements your controls and then audits them has a conflict. Most reputable firms maintain independence by separating consulting and audit engagements, but it’s worth asking about directly.
Questions to Ask During Evaluation
- How many SOC 2 audits have you completed for SaaS companies in the past year?
- What cloud platforms and development practices are your auditors familiar with?
- Can you walk me through your typical evidence request process?
- What does your timeline look like from engagement to final report?
- How do you handle findings or control gaps discovered during the audit?
- Can I see a sample report?
- Who will be my primary point of contact, and how accessible are they?
- What’s your approach to scoping a SaaS product with a microservices architecture?
The Role of Your Compliance Partner
If you’re working with a compliance consulting firm like Concerto, we typically help with auditor selection as part of the engagement. We know which firms work well for SaaS companies, which ones are thorough but reasonable, and which ones will create unnecessary friction.
We also manage the auditor relationship throughout the engagement: coordinating evidence delivery, translating auditor requests into actionable tasks for your team, and resolving questions before they become findings. A good compliance partner makes the auditor relationship productive rather than adversarial.
Timing Your Selection
Start evaluating auditors at least two to three months before your target audit date. Good auditors book up, especially in Q4 when many companies are trying to complete their annual audit before year-end.
If you’re pursuing SOC 2 for the first time, select your auditor before or during your readiness phase. Understanding your auditor’s expectations and approach early helps you prepare more effectively.
At Concerto, auditor coordination is part of every compliance engagement. We help you select the right firm, manage the relationship, and ensure the process is as smooth as possible. Schedule a consultation to get started.
