How an AI Startup Secured Their Platform Before Launch
The founders of a four-person AI startup had an innovative machine learning platform ready for market. Investors were interested, but they all wanted to understand how the company was approaching security before moving forward. With beta customers lined up and sensitive data flowing through their platform, the founders knew they needed to get serious about compliance — and fast.
Their roadmap required a clear security posture, a SOC2 foundation, and, ideally, a clean security audit for potential investors. They turned to us to implement a security architecture review and help comply with SOC2 requirements in three weeks.
The Challenge: Security Readiness on a Compressed Timeline
The team understood that their product, which handled sensitive personal and financial data, would require robust security controls — both to close deals and to protect their users effectively. However, they had no formal security processes in place:
- No written security policies existed.
- Application logging was minimal, with little context about user behavior.
- The sensitive data flow included integrations with third-party APIs, some of which did not encrypt data in transit.
- Access controls were managed loosely, with no formalized user roles.
- The team had little experience in conducting security audits or understanding compliance frameworks.
With a hard deadline looming, we needed to build a robust yet manageable security foundation that could scale with their growth.
Week 1: Assessing Existing Infrastructure and Building Documentation
We initiated the project with a review of their cloud architecture. The platform hosted on AWS already had some security best practices in place, but many were lightly documented.
Gap Assessment and Critical Findings:
- Missing Policies: They lacked core security policies, including Information Security and Incident Response plans. We drafted high-level policies that aligned with operational capacities.
- Access Control Gaps: Users were sharing credentials, drastically increasing risk. We immediately implemented role-based access controls (RBAC) for their application, clearly defining user roles for admins, analysts, and end-users.
- Logging Infrastructure Needs: Logging was official only for error messages. We embedded structured application logging using a service like Loggly to track user actions, data access procedures, and system events — key for both compliance and security monitoring.
- API Security Weaknesses: We identified API endpoints that did not enforce HTTPS, risking exposure of sensitive user data during transmission.
Policy Implementation: We developed and implemented critical policies that defined the security controls in greater detail:
- Information Security Policy focused on the handling of sensitive data and prevention of unauthorized access.
- Access Control Policy established guidelines for user access levels, ensuring that sensitive operations were performed only by authorized personnel.
- Incident Response Plan which included defined roles and communication channels with escalation paths.
By the end of the first week, we had established a baseline that covered fundamental security concepts aligned with SOC2 compliance.
Week 2: Building Security Controls and Monitoring Framework
With foundational policies drafted, we moved to harden their security posture through implementations:
Monitoring and Logging Enhancement:
- We set up CloudWatch for centralized logging from all application components. Logs included user actions, API hits, and error messages with structured logging for easier analysis.
- Additional monitoring protocols were established to trigger alerts for suspicious activities (e.g., multiple failed login attempts, unauthorized access to sensitive data).
Security Controls Implementation:
- We enforced API security through OAuth2 for authentication processes in all endpoints. This required user tokens to guarantee that only authorized users could access data.
- AES-256 encryption was established for sensitive data both in transit (using HTTPS on all endpoints) and at rest. This was particularly important for data handled by third-party service providers, especially those lacking built-in encryption.
Incident Response Tabletop Exercise:
- To prepare the team practically, we conducted a tabletop exercise illustrating potential security incidents. This helped them understand how to implement the incident response plan effectively if a real issue arose.
By the end of the second week, the startup had a framework for monitoring and responding to security incidents actively alongside well-defined access protocols for users.
Week 3: Finalizing Evidence and Preparing Audit Ready Materials
The final week concentrated on ensuring all evidence for the SOC2 audit was adequately documented and accessible:
Evidence Compilation:
- Automated scripts gathered logs and security incidents for the SOC2 criteria, ready for the auditor to review. We implemented a mechanism for the continuous collection of logs to ensure usability for future audits.
- All documentations were stored within an organized repository, complete with version control to showcase efforts made over time, demonstrating the commitments made to maintaining compliance.
Vendor Risk Assessments:
- We conducted vendor assessments for their integrated APIs to ensure they adhered to the same security principles. We drafted BAA agreements where the vendor was handling sensitive personal data.
Final Audit Review:
- We coordinated a pre-audit review to simulate how the SOC2 audit would proceed, addressing gaps and ensuring all materials were in order. This included project review sessions with founders and engineers to clarify the compliance process and artifacts required.
Security Frameworks Applied
Building a SOC 2 foundation for an AI startup requires grounding technical controls in established security standards. Our implementation was aligned with:
- OWASP Top 10 — API security hardening referenced the OWASP Top 10, including enforcing HTTPS on all endpoints (OWASP A02: Cryptographic Failures), implementing OAuth2 properly (OWASP A07: Identification and Authentication Failures), and validating all inputs (OWASP A03: Injection). These are the baseline expectations for any application handling sensitive data.
- NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) — We structured the security policy set around NIST CSF's five functions: Identify (asset inventory, risk assessment), Protect (access controls, encryption), Detect (CloudWatch monitoring, alerting), Respond (incident response plan), Recover (backup and DR). This gives investors a recognized framework to evaluate the posture rather than a bespoke claim.
- SANS/CWE Top 25 — Static analysis tools were configured with CWE Top 25 rulesets to catch dangerous code patterns (buffer overflows, SQL injection vectors, improper input validation) before they reached staging. For an AI platform, CWE-20 (Improper Input Validation) is especially critical given the model inference surface.
SOC 1 vs SOC 2: This engagement targeted SOC 2 Type I as the immediate deliverable, which establishes that controls are suitably designed at a point in time. SOC 2 Type II — which demonstrates controls operating effectively over a period — was the 6-month roadmap target. For AI platforms handling financial or reporting data on behalf of enterprise clients, SOC 1 (SSAE 18) may also be required. Our Security & SOC 2 Compliance Engineering practice scopes the right framework combination for your customer profile.
Automating ongoing VAPT: The pre-launch security assessment was a manual point-in-time review. Sustained security posture requires continuous testing as the codebase evolves. Our VAPT automation workflows describe how we integrate automated vulnerability assessment into the development lifecycle for AI companies — turning what would be a quarterly manual exercise into a continuous signal.
The Result
Three weeks after beginning the process, we had a clean SOC2 Type I report ready. The investors were impressed and reassured by the security architecture and the thorough reporting of security practices in line with industry standards.
Furthermore, the foundational security measures implemented not only protected the company but also greatly enhanced the confidence of prospective customers.
The startup launched as planned, securing investor confidence that they were in a position to build credible partnerships with healthcare and fintech companies as their product rolled out.
What You Need to Know
Building security should not feel overwhelming, even for startups handling sensitive data. Start by developing clear policies, implementing essential security controls, and creating robust logging and incident response systems.
The key takeaway? Compliance doesn’t have to feel like a heavy burden if you have the right processes and expertise in place. We specialize in helping organizations build this foundation efficiently. If your startup is facing similar security hurdles, get in touch with us to streamline your security preparations for launch.
Related Resources
More articles:
- Fintech SOC 2 Type II in 3 Weeks
- Healthcare SaaS: HIPAA + SOC 2 Compliance
- How to Pass Your SOC 2 Audit
- VAPT Automation Workflows
Our solution: Security & SOC 2 Compliance Engineering
Glossary:
Comparisons:
Free Tool: Check your SOC2 readiness before launch — get a score and prioritized action list in 2 minutes. → SOC2 Readiness Assessment