Case Study

Driving SOC 2 Compliance in SaaS Mortgage Software

Industry: Mortgage SaaS

Location: United States

Company Background: A leading SaaS provider that streamlines the mortgage appraisal process with a cloud-based platform. Designed to enhance operational efficiency and deliver a superior borrower experience, this software serves mortgage lenders and appraisal vendors nationwide. With a growing client base, the company recognized the need for SOC 2 to stand out in a highly regulated environment that demands stringent data security and compliance standards. 

As a trusted SaaS provider for the mortgage industry, this company sought to differentiate itself by demonstrating its commitment to security and compliance. With SOC 2 compliance becoming an essential benchmark in the industry, the company recognized the need to modernize its governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) practices to align with client and regulatory expectations. Achieving SOC 2 certification would not only validate their security posture but also enable them to build greater trust with lenders, appraisal vendors, and other stakeholders.

 

Challenges
The company faced several challenges in its journey toward SOC 2 compliance:

  1. Stressful and Disjointed Audit Preparation:
    The absence of a centralized compliance management system made audit preparation a reactive, labor-intensive process. Collecting evidence to satisfy SOC 2 requirements involved combing through emails, shared drives, and disparate systems—resulting in inefficiencies, missed deadlines, and increased stress.

  2. Manual and Inefficient Third-Party Vendor Risk Management:
    With dozens of third-party vendors handling sensitive borrower and lender data, ensuring vendor compliance was critical. The company relied on spreadsheets and email-based questionnaires to evaluate vendors, a process prone to delays and a lack of visibility.

  3. Policy Management and Attestation Tracking:
    Employees were required to acknowledge critical security and compliance policies regularly. However, the manual tracking system was time-consuming and prone to errors, making it difficult to ensure complete participation and documentation.

  4. Fragmented Compliance Monitoring:
    Without an integrated platform, tracking compliance across multiple business units was challenging. There was no centralized repository for mapping controls to compliance frameworks, which made monitoring progress cumbersome and prone to oversight.

  5. Resource-Intensive Reporting:
    Leadership and external auditors demanded regular updates on compliance status. Generating these reports involved significant manual effort, resulting in delays and reduced transparency.

 

Solution
TruOps GRC platform offered tools and workflows that enabled the company to take a more systematic and organized approach to their SOC 2 compliance journey. Key features of the platform included:

  1. Centralized Evidence Management:
    While evidence collection remained a manual process, the GRC platform provided a centralized location to store and organize documentation. This eliminated the need to track evidence across emails, shared drives, and other fragmented systems, saving significant time and reducing the risk of oversight.

  2. Improved Vendor Risk Management:
    The platform introduced a streamlined approach to managing third-party vendor risks. It facilitated the creation and tracking of vendor risk questionnaires and centralized the results in one dashboard, improving visibility and response times.

  3. Efficient Policy Management:
    The GRC platform enabled automated distribution of security and compliance policies, along with tracking employee attestations. This ensured that policy acknowledgment rates were consistently documented, reducing administrative burdens and increasing accountability.

  4. Centralized Compliance Monitoring:
    The platform provided a unified view of controls and their mapping to compliance frameworks, including SOC 2. This gave the compliance team and stakeholders a real-time overview of progress, helping them identify gaps and stay on top of deadlines.

  5. Customizable Reporting:
    The platform offered the ability to generate tailored compliance reports for leadership and external auditors. By consolidating compliance metrics in a single system, it simplified reporting processes and improved transparency.

 

Implementation Process
The implementation process was structured to minimize disruption and maximize efficiency:

  1. Discovery and Planning:
    The GRC provider worked with the company to understand their existing workflows, compliance gaps, and audit requirements.

  2. Configuration and Integration:
    The platform was configured from template to align with the company’s specific SOC 2 controls and processes. Integration with vulnerability management, third-party risk, and ticketing systems ensured seamless evidence collection.

  3. Training and Rollout:
    The provider conducted training sessions to familiarize the compliance team and key stakeholders with the platform’s features. Employees were onboarded gradually to ensure widespread adoption.

  4. Continuous Improvement:
    Feedback loops were established to refine workflows and leverage advanced features like risk scoring and automated alerts.

 

Results and Impact
The GRC solution delivered measurable results that transformed the company’s compliance and risk management practices:

  1. SOC 2 Compliance Achieved:
    By automating evidence collection and tracking, the company was able to achieve SOC 2 certification in a significantly shorter timeframe, with minimal disruption to day-to-day operations.

  2. Efficiency Gains:
    Manual processes were replaced with automated workflows, saving the compliance team hundreds of hours annually. Vendor assessments that once took weeks were completed in days.

  3. Enhanced Risk Visibility:
    Real-time dashboards offered a clear picture of compliance and vendor risks, enabling proactive mitigation strategies.

  4. Improved Audit Experience:
    The centralized platform impressed external auditors with its organization and transparency, resulting in a smoother and less stressful audit process.

  5. Stronger Stakeholder Confidence:
    By demonstrating a robust compliance framework, the company strengthened trust with mortgage lenders, appraisal vendors, and regulators, solidifying its position as an industry leader.

Key Takeaways
This case highlights the importance of a scalable, integrated GRC solution for SaaS providers operating in regulated industries. By automating manual processes, the company not only achieved SOC 2 compliance but also established a foundation for sustained growth and trust.

Transform your compliance and risk management practices with a GRC solution tailored to your needs. Visit www.truops.com to explore how we can support your business.

TruOps played a crucial role in streamlining our SOC2 audit process, reducing what used to take months down to just days with the auditors. The platform’s efficient workflows and automation tools made it easy to manage and organize audit requirements without living in excel spreadsheets. I've been impressed with TruOps for its responsive and supportive team. Their customer support is fantastic, always willing to go the extra mile and eager to collaborate on new feature requests. TruOps has been a reliable partner in helping us meet our GRC needs.

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