If you’ve ever had a customer ask, “Do you have a SOC 2 Type II report?” and your soul briefly left your body, welcome. This is a safe space.
For application development leaders, SOC 2 Type II usually shows up at the exact moment you’re already juggling roadmap pressure, reliability work, hiring, and that one service that only fails when you’re on PTO. And now we’re adding “auditor-friendly evidence” to the sprint backlog. Cute.
The good news is that SOC 2 doesn’t have to become a year-long side quest where engineering must become the compliance department. But your backend choice can dramatically change the amount of work you’ll carry. Let’s break down what SOC 2 Type II actually means, how backend architecture affects scope and evidence, and what to look for in a backend platform if you don’t want compliance to become your main personality.
SOC 2 Type II in plain English
A SOC 2 audit is, at its core, a report on controls at a service organization related to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and/or data privacy.
A few important clarifications (because auditors love precision):
- SOC 2 is an attestation report, not a magical force field. It’s evidence that controls exist and are operating.
- Security is the baseline. Every SOC 2 includes the Security (Common Criteria) category; the others are added depending on your commitments and risk profile.
- Type I vs Type II is a timeline thing:
- Type I: design of controls at a point in time.
- Type II: design and operating effectiveness over a period (often 3–12 months, depending on your auditor and program maturity).
- SOC 2 reports are typically restricted-use (shared under an NDA with customers and auditors). If a vendor offers a SOC 3, that’s the “public-friendly” version based on the same scope as the related SOC 2 report.
Why does Type II feel like it “counts more” in procurement conversations? Because it demonstrates that controls weren’t created on a whim for the audit; they operated over time. Evidence for this audit is not just about showing that your policies and procedures are in place, but about demonstrating that they have been followed over your review period.
SOC 2 is a scope game
SOC 2 is all about how your system works: infrastructure, software, people, procedures, and data. Which means your backend architecture directly impacts your SOC 2 scope.
If your backend includes 12 services, 3 cloud providers, and a homegrown job runner named “temp-final-v3”… the scope can get spicy. If your backend is consolidated and managed, the scope can be smaller, cleaner, and easier to explain (to auditors and to users).
Let’s talk about the three backend paths.
Path 1: Build your backend (maximum control, maximum responsibility)
What it looks like: You build and operate your own backend stack (custom services, cloud infrastructure, observability, deployment pipelines, auth, databases, etc.).
The upside
- Full architectural control
- Easier to meet niche constraints (data residency, custom encryption, weird legacy integrations)
- You own the roadmap and performance characteristics
The SOC 2 reality
Building is doable, but you’re responsible for the controls and the evidence across a much larger surface area. That usually means engineering (plus DevOps/SRE/security) owns or supports things like:
- Access management (least privilege, approvals, reviews)
- Logging, monitoring, and alerting
- Change management controls (approvals, testing, rollback, tracking)
- Vulnerability management and patching
- Incident response processes and documentation
- Backup/DR testing and recovery objectives
- Vendor management for every third-party tool you stitched in
None of the above is necessarily bad; it’s just… a lot. And it competes with product delivery in a way your roadmap will definitely notice.
Path 2: Buy a SaaS backend solution (less ops, more vendor dependency)
What it looks like: You buy a backend product that handles significant parts of the backend, often with opinionated workflows and constraints.
The upside
- Less infrastructure work
- Faster time-to-launch
- The vendor may already have mature controls and compliance reports
The SOC 2 reality
You’ve reduced operational burden, but you’ve introduced vendor risk and vendor dependency into your control environment. In SOC 2 terms, this often comes down to:
- How much can you rely on the vendor’s controls
- What you still must implement (and prove you’ve implemented)
- Whether the vendor’s scope actually covers the areas you depend on
This is where many teams learn the difference between “vendor says they’re secure” and “vendor provides audit-ready evidence.”
Path 3: Build on a managed backend platform (shared responsibility, less surface area)
What it looks like: You build your backend logic and data model, but the platform provides managed infrastructure, security features, and operational controls.
The upside
- Less operational overhead, more building. You’re not hand-rolling (or heroically duct-taping) foundational backend plumbing like scaling, patching, backups, and baseline security hardening.
- Smaller, cleaner compliance surface area.
- Built-in governance patterns scale better across teams.
- You keep flexibility without going full custom.
- Easier to modernize without a big-bang rewrite.
The SOC 2 reality
Shared responsibility is real, and you need to be unmistakably familiar with it. Consider:
- You need to understand your vendor’s scope, its boundaries, and what subservice providers are used.
- Misconfiguration can undo the compliance-ready benefits fast. If you give everyone god-mode permissions, skip MFA, or treat prod like a shared sandbox, the platform can’t save you from…you.
- Even if the platform handles infrastructure controls, your application behavior, integrations, data flows, and releases still need operational discipline and evidence.
- Vendor risk doesn’t vanish; it changes shape. You’ll want to document how you evaluate vendors, manage access to their systems, handle vendor incidents or downtime, and plan for portability/exit.
This is the path that often maps well to how modern dev teams work: move faster, reduce ops load, still keep flexibility. But (and I say this with love): shared responsibility doesn’t mean “vendor handles everything.” It means you need to be super clear on what you inherit vs. what you own.
Shared responsibility: know your side
Cloud providers explain this well: security and compliance are shared responsibilities, with the provider managing some layers while the customer remains responsible for configuration, data, and usage patterns.
The same idea applies when you use a backend platform:
- The vendor might handle infrastructure controls, platform security controls, and parts of availability.
- You still own app-level controls, such as configuring permissions, managing users, processing data compliantly, and responding to incidents.
AWS breaks it down as security “of” the cloud vs security “in” the cloud, and even calls out “inherited controls” vs “shared controls.” That framing is gold for SOC 2 scoping conversations. Pro tip: your managed backend platform should help you answer questions about shared responsibility and how to improve your own security posture.
Don’t skip Complementary User Entity Controls (CUECs)
When a vendor gives you a SOC report, you’re not just looking for the auditor's opinion, you’re also looking for the section that basically says, “Here’s what we do, and here’s what you must do for the control environment to work.”
Those are Complementary User Entity Controls (CUECs)—controls that the service provider expects customers to implement, such as managing user access, enabling MFA, and applying security configurations.
If you ignore CUECs, you can end up with the worst of both worlds. You thought you “inherited” the control…but the auditor considers it incomplete unless you did your part.
Your path and SOC 2 effort summarized
If you build everything:
- You have full control and full evidence burden.
If you buy a tool:
- You reduce internal controls in some areas, but you inherit:
- Vendor review overhead
- Contract/security questionnaire cycles
- The need to map vendor controls to your own risk/control environment
If you build on a platform with SOC 2 Type II compliance:
- You can often reduce the burden in key areas, but only if:
- The vendor’s SOC scope matches your usage
- You implement the vendor’s CUECs
- You still run your internal controls (policies, access reviews, incident response, etc.)
Backend shopping (SOC 2 edition)
I’m skipping the jargon from our previous backend evaluation blog and getting right to the tactical non-negotiables.
Audit logging
You want answers to:
- What events are logged (configuration changes, access changes, data access)?
- Who can view logs, and how is access controlled?
- Retention periods and export options
- Tamper resistance/integrity of logs (even if achieved via platform controls + process)
Example: Xano’s Audit Logs feature provides searchable logging for changes to workspaces, environment variables, tenants, databases, and function stacks. Logs can be filtered and exported to CSV, making auditing much less daunting.
Access controls
SOC 2 security criteria live and die by access controls.
Look for:
- RBAC with meaningful granularity
- Ability to restrict access to production data separately
- Enforcement options (2FA, SSO constraints, session timeouts)
- Logs for permission changes
Example: Xano’s RBAC allows you to assign default or custom roles to restrict access and permissions. This feature also allows you to filter by team member and workspace to view permissions enforced, making it easy to collect audit evidence.
Encryption
Don’t just ask “Is data encrypted?”, ask:
- Encryption at rest and in transit (baseline expectation)
- Key management model (vendor-managed vs customer-managed, and any options)
- Any application-level encryption features, if you need field-level protection
Example: In a Xano workspace, you can encrypt any value/payload you can reference in your Function Stack / XanoScript.
Bonus controls that make auditors (and engineers) less cranky
SOC 2 isn’t only those three mentioned features. Developer leaders should also evaluate:
- Environment separation/release management: how you isolate dev/stage/prod, how you promote releases, and how you avoid “oops I changed prod” moments
- Example: Xano’s Tenant Center is one way to manage dev/stage/prod environments with isolated databases and controlled release deployment.
- Change tracking and rollback: who changed what, when, and how to revert
- Example: Xano’s Schema Versioning tracks changes and who made them, and supports rollback.
- Data residency options: where your data is hosted and where it gets processed. This is especially important if you deal with regulated or regional data requirements.
These aren’t “nice-to-haves” when you’re scaling teams; they’re how you keep velocity without waking up to a surprise audit finding.
What a SOC 2 Type II vendor gets you and what it doesn’t
Let’s talk about the elephant in the Jira board: Using a SOC 2 Type II-compliant platform doesn’t magically make your company SOC 2 compliant.
Hint: This is exactly why CUECs matter!
Next steps checklist
- Define your system boundary:
- Determine what is in scope (backend platform(s), cloud provider(s), CI/CD, logging tools, identity management, etc.).
- For each vendor: request the SOC report and read the “boring” parts:
- Audit period and report type (Type I vs. Type II)
- Which trust service categories are included
- Subservice organizations
- CUECs
- Map your “inherited vs. owned” controls:
- Determine what the vendor is responsible for or the scope of their compliance.
- What you are responsible for, using the shared responsibility mindset.
- Be aware of the evidence you will need to share for both inherited and owned controls.
- Choose the backend path that matches your reality:
- Make the decision with scope and evidence in mind.
Closing thoughts
SOC 2 Type II is basically the high school graduation of modern software: maybe not all that glamorous, but it unlocks doors and reduces chaos. I would like to emphasize that SOC 2 audit preparation is not a short-term project, but rather a security effort spanning your entire team and systems for your review period.
Pick a backend strategy that lets you ship product reliably, has clarity around shared compliance responsibilities, and (my personal favorite) not stress during those audit seasons!
Whether you’re just starting your compliance journey or looking to simplify an already complex scope, choosing the right foundation can make the process dramatically more manageable. If you want to see how a managed backend-as-a-service platform can support both velocity and accountability, you can create a free Xano account and explore it yourself—no procurement cycle required. Start building for free.
