Implementing SaaS Compliance and Attribution: Step-by-Step Guide
Let’s say your SaaS business has hit its stride: growth is consistent, reaching revenue goals is on the horizon, and your team is excited about scaling. Then, the SaaS compliance wake-up call comes. This could be anything — an enterprise prospect requesting the SOC 2 report, or an investor demanding detailed data attribution during due diligence.
Compliance can quickly become an urgent priority instead of a distant concern. This is the wall many founders encounter: waiting too long to deal with SaaS compliance management until it becomes a roadblock to opportunities. Funding rounds, enterprise contracts, or legal reviews often trigger immediate SaaS compliance needs. Without preparation, these requirements can derail your growth plans.
“The biggest mistake I see is leaving compliance for later. The further you get into development, the more expensive and risky it becomes to retrofit these controls. When you already have a working product, making compliance changes can be disruptive for your production environment.”
— Yurii Korabel, DevOps Team Lead at Brights, AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Cloud Practitioner
Behind Brights’ belt are mobile, web, and SaaS product development in finance and banking, insurance, legal, education, and other industries known for rigid compliance demands. An IoT management solution, a secure platform for content creators that protects their intellectual property rights, a POS management system for a payment solutions supplier — these are just a few examples of our work in the SaaS field.
SaaS products developed by Brights
Key takeaways
Over-specifying compliance requirements wastes money. Focus on frameworks your target customers actually require and your industry demands.
Infrastructure as code eliminates manual server changes that break compliance.
Automated security scans in CI/CD catch violations before production. Dependency checks, secret detection, and vulnerability scanning prevent compliance failures during SaaS development deployment cycles.
Environment segmentation prevents compliance failures. Separate dev, staging, and production environments with controlled progression.
Attribution tracking serves dual purposes: satisfying audit requirements and providing business intelligence for growth decisions.
RFP stage: Defining the right SaaS compliance scope
A Request for Proposal (RFP) for compliance implementation is your blueprint for outsourcing or building systems that will meet regulatory requirements. It's how you communicate your needs to potential partners, whether you're working with consultants, compliance specialists, or development teams.
When decision-makers of SaaS companies first approach compliance implementation, they often fall into two camps: those who ask for “everything we might ever need” and those who focus only on immediate requirements. Both approaches are problematic.
“We’ve had clients that came to us with two-thousand-page requirement documents — and then it turned out to be just a random file from Google, not backed by any practical reason. The problem is that over-specifying will get you a bloated, expensive system you don’t need. Luckily, our clients trust our expertise and agree to adhere to credible frameworks that make sense for their product. That’s what our consulting services are for.”
— Yurii Korabel, DevOps Team Lead at Brights, AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Cloud Practitioner
The key is understanding which compliance frameworks matter for your business model and growth trajectory. Different types of SaaS across industries face distinct regulatory landscapes, and your RFP should reflect this reality.
| Framework | Best for | Key requirements | Business impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 | B2B SaaS targeting enterprise clients, financial services | Security controls, access management, monitoring | Required for enterprise sales |
| ISO 27001 | Global SaaS, EU market expansion, government contracts | Comprehensive ISMS, risk assessment, continuous improvement | Opens international markets |
| GDPR | Any SaaS processing EU citizen data, privacy-focused brands | Data mapping, consent management, breach procedures | Enables EU operations, builds trust |
| HIPAA | Healthcare SaaS, medical device integration, patient data | PHI protection, access controls, audit trails | Mandatory for the healthcare sector |
| PCI DSS | SaaS handling payment data, e-commerce platforms | Payment security, encryption, network monitoring | Required for payment processing |
Here are a few recommendations for when you’re crafting your RFP:
Start with three critical questions: What compliance certifications do your target customers require? Which regulatory frameworks align with your expansion plans over the next 18 months? What's your realistic budget and timeline for implementation?
Specify your current tech stack, existing enterprise/startup security measures, target compliance frameworks, expected timeline, and budget range.
Include clear RFP evaluation criteria for SaaS vendors such as industry experience and implementation methodology.
Avoid generic requirements like “make us compliant”. Instead, outline specific outcomes like “achieve SOC 2 Type II certification for our core platform within eight months.”
Phase 1: Discovery and risk assessment
Before implementing any compliance framework, you need a clear picture of where you stand today. This discovery phase forms the foundation of your entire compliance implementation strategy and determines the timeline and budget.
We recommend starting with a comprehensive audit of your current systems: mapping all data flows, documenting existing security controls, and conducting an inventory of third-party integrations. At this point, you might discover gaps you didn't know existed, from untracked API endpoints to shadow IT tools that bypass security protocols.
Following proven SaaS security best practices, we typically begin with automated scanning tools to identify vulnerabilities, followed by manual reviews of access controls, data integrity checks, data handling procedures, and incident response capabilities.
Risk prioritization should focus on three critical areas:
security vulnerabilities that could lead to breaches;
data processing activities that handle sensitive information;
third-party risks, with applications extending your attack surface.
“One of the most common mistakes we see is with access controls. If you start with everyone having access to everything, it's really hard to lock things down later without breaking something important or missing a critical permission. You might accidentally cut off a service that needs database access, and suddenly your app crashes.
Same thing with secrets management. If your API keys and passwords are hardcoded in files or committed to your repository, it's not technically difficult to move them to a proper secrets manager. But when you have to rotate all those secrets during the migration — that's where things get tricky. One wrong move and you've got downtime.”
— Yurii Korabel, DevOps Team Lead at Brights, AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Cloud Practitioner
Phase 2: Designing the system
Once you understand your compliance gaps, the next phase involves architecting systems that embed compliance controls directly into your product foundation.
Thought-through systems start with the principle of “compliance by design”. Every component, from your authentication system to data storage, should include built-in controls that will automatically maintain compliance standards. Down the road, this approach reduces ongoing maintenance overhead and ensures new features inherit security protocols without additional development efforts.
Here are the most popular compliance tools options to consider:
| Solution | Best for | Pros | Cons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drata | Mid-market SaaS (50-500 employees) | Strong automation, multiple frameworks | Limited customization options |
| Vanta | Early-stage startups to Series B | User-friendly, fast setup | Higher cost per employee |
| Secureframe | Companies prioritizing speed to market | Quick compliance, good support | Less flexibility for complex setups |
| Thoropass | SOC 2-focused smaller teams | SOC 2 specialization, affordable | Limited to SOC 2, fewer integrations |
| Strike Graph | Budget-conscious growing startups | Competitive pricing, good UX | Newer platform, smaller ecosystem |
| Hyperproof | Multi-framework enterprise needs | Strong SaaS risk management, multiple standards | Complex setup, higher learning curve |
| Custom setup | Enterprise SaaS with unique requirements | Complete control, tailored solutions | Longer development time, ongoing maintenance |
“Custom compliance solutions make sense when you're dealing with unique or complex infrastructure. For instance, you might need particular logging requirements or internal controls that generic platforms don't support. In certain industries, especially highly regulated ones (fintech, medtech), custom solutions can also become a competitive advantage.”
— Yurii Korabel, DevOps Team Lead at Brights, AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Cloud Practitioner
Phase 3: Building automated compliance infrastructure
The implementation phase is where compliance transforms from planning documents into automated systems that work alongside your development process. Instead of treating security as a separate concern, current DevOps compliance practices in SaaS projects embed compliance checks directly into your code delivery pipeline. Our DevOps team singles out four most important ones.
CI/CD
CI/CD (continuous integration and continuous delivery) process is basically the enforcement mechanism for compliance controls. Every time a developer commits code, automated systems check for vulnerabilities, scan dependencies, and validate that secrets aren't accidentally exposed.
Segmentation
Another fundamental practice is segmenting environments properly into development, staging, and production. Code has to pass tests at each level before it moves forward. This way, nothing broken or insecure makes it to production, where real users are. It's a simple concept, but it covers a lot of SaaS compliance requirements around controlled deployments.
Infrastructure as code
Infrastructure as code (defining servers and configurations through code files instead of manual setup) ensures that your compliance controls remain consistent and auditable. When everything from server configurations to security policies exists in version-controlled files, you eliminate the risk of undocumented changes that could break compliance.
“Infrastructure as code is arguably the most important practice, since it fundamentally changes how we approach compliance audits. When we use technologies like Terraform to define infrastructure declaratively, every server, database, and security configuration becomes documented and version-controlled. When auditors come in, they can see exactly how we built everything and track changes over time through Git. It's kind of like having a complete history book of your infrastructure.”
— Yurii Korabel, DevOps Team Lead at Brights, AWS Certified Solutions Architect and Cloud Practitioner
Cloud-native compliance tools
Cloud platforms provide additional compliance infrastructure through services like AWS CloudTrail, which logs every user action across your environment. Combined with proper access controls and multifactor authentication, these tools create comprehensive audit trails that satisfy most regulatory frameworks.
Phase 4: Attribution layer
Most compliance frameworks require detailed audit trails showing user actions, data access, and business impact. That’s what attribution is for. It creates visibility into who did what, when, and how it impacts business. Without it, you're essentially telling auditors “we don't know”, which leads to SaaS compliance failures.
A reliable attribution layer serves dual purposes: satisfying audit requirements for frameworks like SOC 2 and providing the data foundation for strategic business decisions. Forward-thinking SaaS teams use this infrastructure not just to achieve compliance but to also optimize user experience, reduce churn, and identify expansion opportunities.
So, how to implement SaaS attribution? Start with three principles: comprehensive tracking, privacy protection, and audit compliance.
At Brights, we design attribution systems that capture granular user journeys while maintaining data privacy through automated anonymization and role-based access controls. Our technical approach includes event sourcing for immutable audit trails and automated GDPR compliance checks. We integrate attribution tracking into the product development lifecycle itself, ensuring new features inherit proper tracking from day one.
For Nova Assure's IoT management platform, we built a unified dashboard with secure access control, user roles, and dynamic reporting capabilities. The platform's custom analytics provided visibility into device performance and user interactions across their diverse IoT ecosystem, demonstrating how proper data architecture supports both operational needs and SaaS compliance requirements. To learn more about our experience, check out the ultimate guide to SaaS product development.
Phase 5: Audits, upgrades, and living compliance
We’ve often witnessed SaaS teams treating compliance as a one-time project. In reality, it’s a continuous process that scales alongside product development. Our team focuses on “living compliance”, with systems automatically adapting to new features, team changes, and regulatory updates.
Through CI/CD integration, compliance checks become part of your regular deployment pipeline, ensuring new code releases maintain certification standards without manual intervention. This means re-certification audits become routine validation rather than stressful scrambles to fix compliance gaps.
How to maintain standards as you scale?
Team onboarding. New engineers inherit compliance protocols through automated training modules and security-first development practices;
Regular monitoring. Internal audits identify drift before external auditors arrive;
Real-time reporting. Automated dashboards and monitoring systems provide continuous visibility into compliance status across all environments.
“Your product never stops evolving (if it’s a viable one), so your compliance can't be static either. As our clients push new features, our automated checks kick in: security scans, data flow updates, and access permission reviews. Sometimes we do catch things manually, but generally such automation beats scrambling during audit season. The key is having systems that grow with you instead of breaking every time you add a new integration or onboard a new team member.”
— DevOps team at Brights
Conclusion: Compliance as a sign of trust
Compliance and attribution determine whether your SaaS scales into enterprise markets or gets stuck chasing smaller deals. Thriving teams understand that proper compliance infrastructure isn’t just about checking boxes on the SaaS compliance checklist. It’s primarily about creating trust, ensuring traceability, and becoming a growth engine. High-paying prospective customers will see your commitment to compliance as reliability. Investors will see it as reduced risk.
Brights has spent years helping SaaS companies in fintech, insurtech, education, and other highly regulated industries navigate compliance-related challenges. Every implementation teaches us something new about balancing security with speed and compliance with innovation. If you're ready to determine where your compliance journey should start, we'd be happy to share our experience-backed insights and help you pave the path forward.
FAQ.
SOC 2 is typically the best starting point for SaaS startups targeting enterprise customers. It covers essential security protocols and operational controls that unlock B2B deals. If you handle EU data, follow a comprehensive SaaS GDPR compliance guide approach first. For healthcare-related products, HIPAA compliance from day one is a must.
