Compliance Automation — Audit-Ready by Default, Not by Sprint
For compliance officers, GCs, and COOs at regulated businesses — fire safety, healthcare, insurance, financial services, legal, AEC. We install the system that turns compliance from a fire drill into a continuous background process. SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, OSHA, PCI — engineered as workflows, not as quarterly heroics.
Compliance is supposed to be continuous. It runs as a fire drill instead.
Continuous evidence collection and control monitoring — running quietly between audits, ready when the audit arrives.
What we automate
Six workflows that turn audit prep from a sprint into a background process.
-
Evidence collection automation
Screenshots, log exports, access reviews, change tickets, and policy attestations pulled automatically from your real systems on a scheduled cadence. Each evidence artifact tagged to the control(s) it supports, timestamped, hash-signed, stored in your DMS.
-
Certification expiration tracking
Employee certifications, vendor attestations, equipment compliance certs, and license renewals tracked in one register with cascading reminders at 90/60/30/7 days. No more certs expiring silently between audits.
-
Audit-prep packets
On-demand audit packets generated from the evidence repository — framework-mapped (SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / HIPAA / OSHA / PCI), date-ranged, hash-signed. The auditor gets a complete artifact set instead of a three-week scramble.
-
Regulatory reporting
Periodic regulatory filings (HIPAA breach logs, OSHA 300, insurance regulatory reports, financial compliance filings) generated from system data on schedule. Submitted via API where available, exported for manual filing where not.
-
Policy attestation flow
Annual policy attestations, security training acknowledgements, code-of-conduct sign-offs — distributed via your HRIS or DMS, tracked through completion, escalated automatically, evidenced for audit. Email-and-spreadsheet attestation flows retire.
-
Control monitoring & drift detection
Continuous monitoring of control posture against baseline — MFA coverage, access reviews completed on schedule, encryption settings, change-management adherence. Drift surfaces as a control finding before it becomes an audit finding.
The pipeline
Five steps from a compliance program that runs on heroics to one that runs as a system.
- 1
Step 1. Define controls
Map your applicable frameworks (SOC 2 + ISO 27001 + HIPAA, or whichever mix) to your real organizational controls. We cut the duplicate controls so a single piece of evidence serves multiple frameworks where possible.
- 2
Step 2. Instrument data sources
Connect identity (Okta / Azure AD), cloud (AWS / Azure / GCP), DMS, HRIS, ticketing, and finance to the Backbone. Each system becomes an evidence stream tagged to its supporting controls.
- 3
Step 3. Automated evidence capture
Evidence collected on schedule and on event. Each artifact timestamped, hash-signed, tagged to controls, stored in your DMS. Coverage gaps flagged in real time so they never reach audit.
- 4
Step 4. Reporting & alerts
Cert expirations, control drift, coverage gaps, and attestation completion surface as a single compliance posture dashboard. Cascading alerts before things expire or fail.
- 5
Step 5. Audit-prep export
When the audit window opens, the packet is already 90% built. On-demand export to auditor portal, framework-mapped, date-ranged, hash-signed. Audit prep stops being a sprint.
What firms see
Documented + composite ranges from compliance engagements
GRC vs custom — when each wins
-
GRC PLATFORMS (VANTA, DRATA, TUGBOAT)
Win when your control set is standard (SOC 2 Type II + ISO 27001) and your stack is mainstream (Okta, AWS, GitHub, Notion). Pre-built integrations cover most of what you need. Continuous monitoring works out of the box. The Backbone often runs on top of GRC, filling the gaps. -
SPECIALTY COMPLIANCE TOOLS
Win in industries with regulator-specific tooling — fire/life safety, healthcare HIPAA, financial services FINRA. Industry-specific reporting formats, regulator portals, and audit conventions live in these tools. The Backbone integrates with them; it doesn't replace them. -
CUSTOM BACKBONE
Wins when controls are unique (operational compliance specific to your business model), when frameworks combine in non-standard ways, or when your stack is heterogeneous enough that GRC connectors don't cover it. Most engagements end up hybrid: GRC for the standard part, custom Backbone for the rest.
The Compliance Module
One system, five connected sub-modules, plus optional layers. Works standalone or on top of Vanta / Drata / Tugboat — we don't push a vendor.
The Compliance Module
Connected sub-modules that turn your compliance program into a continuous operating system:
Evidence Capture
Scheduled and event-driven artifact collection from identity, cloud, DMS, HRIS, ticketing, and finance systems. Each artifact tagged to the control(s) it supports, timestamped, hash-signed, stored in your DMS. Coverage gaps surface in real time.
Certification Tracking
Employee certs, vendor attestations, equipment compliance, license renewals — one register, cascading reminders, evidence trail. No more silent expirations between audits.
Audit-Prep Generation
On-demand framework-mapped packets (SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / HIPAA / OSHA / PCI) generated from the evidence repository. Date-ranged. Hash-signed. Auditor-portal-ready.
Control Monitoring
Continuous posture monitoring against your baseline — MFA coverage, access reviews, encryption settings, change-management adherence. Drift becomes a finding before audit, not after.
Reporting
Compliance posture dashboard across all active frameworks. Per-framework coverage scores. Per-control evidence freshness. Per-cert expiration timeline. The view a compliance officer wants on Monday morning.
Document Automation Hooks
Optional layer for compliance programs that produce a lot of paper — policies, SOPs, incident reports, training records. Cross-links with /systems/document-automation for templated generation and version-controlled storage with audit trails.
Audit Trail Layer
Optional layer for environments requiring forensic-grade audit trails: append-only event logs, cryptographic chain-of-custody, role-based access controls on the evidence repository itself. Pairs with /systems/audit-automation when internal audit is part of the program.
Stack we connect
We've integrated each of these in production compliance environments.
Engagement
Workshop & Scorecard — half-day diagnostic, $2.5K. Prioritized roadmap whether we build or not.
Foundation install — typical $15–50K depending on framework count, system count, and whether you have GRC already. Goes live module by module.
Ongoing retainer — from $1K/mo for monitoring + maintenance. Higher tiers add ongoing build capacity for new frameworks, new acquisitions, or expanded scope.
Frequently asked questions
The questions compliance officers and COOs ask us before signing the workshop.
Vanta / Drata / Tugboat — do we still need GRC software?
Often yes, sometimes no. If your stack is mainstream (Okta + AWS + GitHub + Notion) and your frameworks are standard (SOC 2 / ISO), GRC platforms cover 70–80% of the control evidence out of the box and we layer the Backbone on top for the rest. If your stack is heterogeneous or your controls are operational/industry-specific, the Backbone often replaces GRC entirely. We're honest about which side of the line you're on during the workshop. See finance, legal, and healthcare for industry-specific posture.
Can you cover SOC 2 / ISO / HIPAA / OSHA / PCI?
Yes — and combinations. Multi-framework is the most common Backbone configuration. We map duplicate controls across frameworks so a single piece of evidence serves multiple programs where possible, which cuts evidence-capture overhead substantially.
How do you handle evidence that lives in Slack / email / Drive?
Carefully. Slack and email evidence is captured as structured exports tagged to the originating control with redaction rules to protect non-relevant content. Drive/SharePoint evidence is captured by reference (link + hash + access policy) rather than copy. Auditors generally accept this when the access policy and audit trail are both producible — and we engineer both.
Will the auditor accept automated evidence?
Yes — and most prefer it. Automated evidence with timestamps, hash-signing, and clear provenance is easier to verify than screenshots reconstructed by humans. We engineer the evidence pipeline to produce artifacts in formats auditors are familiar with, with cryptographic chain-of-custody where the framework benefits from it.
What about certification expiration alerts?
Built in. Every certification (employee, equipment, vendor) lives in a register with cascading reminders at 90/60/30/7 days. Renewals route to the right owner automatically. Expirations don't surprise you anymore.
How does this integrate with our existing compliance team?
The Backbone takes the rote work off the team and gives them better tools for the judgment work. Evidence collection, expiration tracking, and packet generation stop being human jobs. Risk assessment, control design, vendor review, and incident response stay human jobs — with better data underneath. We've never replaced a compliance team; we've made them faster.
Can it support multi-framework simultaneously (SOC 2 + ISO + HIPAA)?
Yes — multi-framework is the default architecture. Control mappings are explicit so a single evidence artifact can serve multiple frameworks where they overlap. Most engagements run 2–4 frameworks concurrently. Long-form on multi-framework documentation here.
What's the typical engagement?
$15–50K foundation install, $1K–3K/mo retainer. The Mariano/FirePlan engagement — 230 hours/month eliminated from manual fire-safety compliance work — sits in the upper end of the install range and is one of our reference engagements. Case study here.
Start here
Start with Your Efficiency Scorecard
Ten minutes. You'll see where your compliance program leaks hours, which controls are running on heroics, and which automations would pay back fastest. From there: workshop, roadmap, phased install — and a compliance posture that's audit-ready by default.
