Do You Actually Need a vCISO for SOC 2? (Probably Not Anymore)

For a standard B2B SaaS company pursuing SOC 2 Type I or Type II, you do not need a retained vCISO. Five years ago, hiring a consultant was the only way to decipher the AICPA's Trust Services Criteria, draft policies, and gather documentation. Today, AI compliance tools handle the entire workflow: scoping, policy writing, evidence collection, control mapping, and audit prep.

The traditional path to SOC 2 costs $50K-$110K in the first year when you add up the compliance platform, the consultant, the auditor, and the internal time. Most of that spend goes to a consultant doing work that software now does better and faster. This article explains exactly what a vCISO does during SOC 2, which tasks AI handles end-to-end, and how to know if your situation is one of the few that still needs a human.

What Does a vCISO Actually Do for SOC 2?

To figure out whether you can skip the consultant, look at what they actually bill for. A typical vCISO engagement involves seven tasks:

1. Scoping: Deciding which Trust Services Criteria (Security, Availability, Confidentiality, etc.) apply to your product.
2. Policy Writing: Drafting information security policies (Access Control, Risk Management, Incident Response, etc.).
3. Gap Analysis: Comparing your current operations against SOC 2 requirements.
4. Evidence Planning: Defining what screenshots, logs, and configurations prove compliance.
5. Remediation Guidance: Telling you to turn on MFA, encrypt databases, set up background checks.
6. Auditor Liaison: Translating auditor requests into language your engineering team understands.
7. Readiness Assessment: A "dry run" audit to catch failures before the real auditor arrives.

Five years ago, a consultant doing these seven things was genuinely valuable. Today, all seven are handled by AI compliance tools. The last two used to be the hardest to automate, but AI assistants can now answer compliance questions in context and provide continuous readiness scoring against Trust Services Criteria.

Which SOC 2 Tasks Can AI Handle vs. Which Need a Human?

Here is where each task stands today:

SOC 2 Task	Traditional vCISO	AI Compliance Officer (Screenata)
Scoping	2-hour workshop to determine applicable criteria	5-minute conversational wizard based on your product and customers
Policy Writing	Find-and-replace company name in Word templates	AI reads your codebase and cloud, writes policies grounded in your real systems
Gap Analysis	Consultant reviews your setup over 2-3 sessions	Automated scan of GitHub, AWS/GCP, IdP identifies gaps against TSC
Evidence Collection	Asks you to take screenshots and upload to a folder	Automatically pulls evidence from your systems: user lists, MFA configs, branch protection, encryption settings
Remediation Guidance	Consultant tells you what to fix in a weekly call	Readiness dashboard with prioritized actions and an AI assistant that answers questions
Auditor Liaison	Translates auditor requests (still valuable for complex cases)	AI assistant answers compliance questions; human support available for edge cases
Readiness Assessment	One-time dry run before audit	Continuous readiness scoring that updates as you make changes

For a standard B2B SaaS company with modern infrastructure (AWS/GCP, GitHub, Google Workspace or Okta, Slack), every row in this table is handled by software. The "human judgment" exceptions that vCISOs cite are real, but they apply to a small minority of companies. More on that below.

The Cost Math: vCISO + Platform vs. AI Compliance Officer

The financial case is clear.

Traditional Path:

• Auditor: $8,000 - $15,000
• vCISO / Consultant: $24,000 - $60,000 / year
• Compliance Platform (Drata/Vanta): $10,000 - $20,000 / year
• Internal Team Time: $9,000 - $15,000 (60-100 hours at $150/hr)
• Total First Year: $51,000 - $110,000+

With Screenata:

• Auditor: $8,000 - $15,000 (still required)
• vCISO / Consultant: $0 (replaced by Screenata)
• Compliance Platform: Included ($299 one-time for Type I, or $499/month for Type II)
• Internal Team Time: $1,500 - $3,000 (10-20 hours at $150/hr)
• Total First Year: $15,500 - $24,000

That is a 62-80% reduction. The traditional path has you paying for a compliance platform that gives you a dashboard and a checklist, then paying a consultant on top to actually fill out the checklist. Screenata does both jobs.

For a detailed breakdown of where every dollar goes, see The Bootstrapped Founder's Guide to SOC 2.

When Should You Actually Hire a vCISO?

There are specific scenarios where AI hits a wall and a human expert earns their fee. If you fall into these categories, do not try to do this yourself.

1. You Have Complex Regulatory Overlap

If you handle patient data (HIPAA + HITRUST) or sell to the federal government (FedRAMP / CMMC), the overlap between frameworks gets messy. A control that satisfies SOC 2 CC6.1 might fail a specific CMMC requirement. Software is getting better at cross-framework mapping, but the legal liability of getting it wrong is high. A consultant helps navigate the gray areas.

2. You Are a Large Enterprise with Legacy Infrastructure

AI compliance tools work best with modern cloud APIs (AWS, Okta, GitHub). If your environment includes on-premise servers, mainframes, or custom legacy ERPs that don't expose APIs, automated tools will show gaps. A vCISO is necessary to design manual control frameworks for infrastructure that software can't reach.

3. Your Board or Contracts Require a Named CISO

Some enterprise contracts or board mandates strictly require a named Chief Information Security Officer. A fractional CISO checks this box. If a breach occurs, having an external expert who signed off on your security program can provide defensibility that software alone cannot.

When a vCISO Is Overkill

For a standard B2B SaaS company with fewer than 50 employees, a modern tech stack, and a SOC 2 Security TSC audit, none of the above scenarios apply. You are paying consultant rates for someone to log into a platform and click buttons you could click yourself. Or worse, you are paying them to write policies from the same Word templates every other startup gets.

Why Compliance Platforms Alone Are Not Enough Either

This is the part that confuses founders. They sign up for Drata or Vanta, pay $10-20K/year, and assume the compliance problem is solved. Then they realize the platform gives them a dashboard and API integrations, but it does not:

• Write their policies. You get templates with blank fields. Someone still has to fill them in with claims that match your actual systems.
• Tell them what to put in the policies. A compliance platform does not know that your app uses Clerk for authentication or that your CI/CD pipeline runs on GitHub Actions. It monitors infrastructure, but it does not read your codebase.
• Answer compliance questions. When you are staring at a Trust Services Criteria requirement and wondering what it means for your specific product, a dashboard cannot help.
• Guide them through remediation. The platform flags that you are missing a control. It does not tell you exactly what to do about it.

This is why most startups using Drata or Vanta still spend $2-5K/month on a consultant. The platform handles monitoring. The consultant handles the thinking. You pay for both.

Screenata does both. It reads your codebase and cloud infrastructure, writes policies grounded in your real systems, collects evidence automatically, and tells you what to fix. See what compliance platforms miss and what Screenata does differently.

Conclusion: You Need an Expert, Not an Expense

The role of a vCISO for standard SOC 2 audits has been fully automated. AI compliance tools now handle every task that consultants used to bill $3-5K/month to manage: scoping, policy writing, gap analysis, evidence collection, remediation guidance, and readiness assessment.

If your budget is tight and your tech stack is modern, you do not need a vCISO and you do not need a separate compliance platform. Screenata is the platform and the compliance officer. Save the consulting budget for a high-quality audit firm that can give you a clean report.

For teams pursuing SOC 2 for the first time, start with SOC 2 for First-Timers: What to Read, What to Skip, and What to Tell Your CEO. For a full cost breakdown, see The Bootstrapped Founder's Guide to SOC 2. And if you are wondering whether AI-generated policies actually pass audits, read Why ChatGPT SOC 2 Policies Fail Audits — it explains why generic AI output fails but codebase-grounded policies work.