# Compliance Monitoring & Evidence Collection: done-for-you AI automation by BufferSol

> A done-for-you compliance monitoring and evidence collection automation is an AI agent that gathers proof that your controls work, all year round. It pulls access reviews, offboarding records, change approvals, training completions and policy acknowledgments from systems such as Okta, Jira, GitHub and your HR platform, checks each item against the control it supports, and files it in Vanta, Drata, Secureframe or a shared evidence folder. Gaps go to the control owner early. BufferSol builds and connects it.

- Canonical: https://buffersoltech.com/done-for-you/legal-compliance/compliance-evidence
- Category: Legal & Compliance
- Provider: BufferSol Technologies (New York; serving the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and the EU)
- Timeline: live in 3 to 6 weeks
- Pricing: quoted after a short scoping call

## Audit evidence gathered, checked and filed all year, not in a panic before fieldwork

**Who it is for:** Software, fintech and services companies of fifty to two thousand staff that hold or are pursuing SOC 2, ISO 27001 or similar certifications, or must keep GDPR records, and where one security or compliance lead carries most of the evidence work.

### Signs you need it
- The weeks before every audit window are spent taking screenshots and chasing people for exports.
- Your compliance platform shows failing tests that someone has to explain to the auditor by hand.
- Quarterly access reviews happen late, or are signed off without anyone checking the list.
- Controls depend on tools your compliance platform does not integrate with.
- Your record of processing activities was written once and has not been updated since.

## Business outcomes
- **Evidence ready before the auditor asks.** Each control has current evidence filed against it throughout the audit period, so fieldwork starts from a complete folder rather than a request list.
- **Problems found while they can still be fixed.** A missed offboarding, an unapproved change or an overdue access review is flagged to its owner within days, not discovered months later as an exception.
- **Less time explaining noise.** The agent checks failing automated tests against context, such as a known test account, and drafts the justification for a person to confirm, instead of leaving it for audit week.

## How it works today
1. The compliance lead keeps a spreadsheet mapping SOC 2 or ISO 27001 controls to the evidence each one needs.
2. Before the audit, they message IT, engineering and HR for exports and screenshots of user lists, change tickets and training records.
3. Evidence for tools outside the compliance platform's integrations is uploaded by hand, often taken outside the right date window.
4. Failing tests in Vanta or Drata are reviewed one by one, and false alarms are explained in notes for the auditor.
5. Auditor follow-up requests arrive by email and are tracked in another spreadsheet until the report is issued.

Hidden costs:
- Engineers and IT staff lose days to evidence requests that interrupt planned work.
- Control failures found late become audit exceptions that customers read in your report.
- Knowledge of where evidence lives sits with one person, which is a risk if they leave.

## How it works done for you
1. We map each control in your framework to the systems and records that prove it, and agree the owner and collection schedule with your compliance lead.
2. On schedule, the agent pulls evidence through APIs and exports: Okta or Entra ID user lists, HRIS leaver records, Jira and GitHub change approvals, endpoint reports from Intune or Jamf, and training completions.
3. It checks each item against the control: for example, that every leaver in BambooHR or Workday lost access within your policy window, or that each production change had an approval.
4. Clean evidence is filed in Vanta, Drata, Secureframe or a dated evidence folder with the control reference, source system and collection time.
5. Gaps and exceptions go to the control owner in Slack or Jira with the specific record at fault, and the agent follows up until it is fixed or a person accepts the exception.
6. For GDPR, it compares your record of processing activities with your vendor list and data flows, and flags new tools or purposes for the privacy lead to review.
7. Every collection run, check result, owner response and override is logged, and auditors get read-only access to the evidence and its trail.

## What changes for the team
- **Compliance or security lead.** Today: Spends weeks before each audit chasing exports, taking screenshots and explaining failing tests. Done for you: Reviews exceptions as they happen, decides on risk acceptance and prepares for the audit with evidence already filed.
- **IT and engineering managers.** Today: Get pulled off planned work for urgent evidence requests and access review spreadsheets. Done for you: Receive a specific, small task when a real gap appears, such as one account to remove or one change to approve.
- **Privacy lead or DPO.** Today: Updates the GDPR record of processing activities only when someone remembers to. Done for you: Gets flagged when a new vendor or data flow appears and keeps the record current as part of normal work.

## KPIs we measure
- **Controls with current evidence:** Share of in-scope controls with evidence collected inside the current period, reported weekly from the evidence log.
- **Time to close a control gap:** Days from the agent flagging an exception to the owner fixing it or accepting the risk, tracked by control family.
- **Staff hours on audit preparation:** Hours logged by compliance, IT and engineering in the month before fieldwork, compared with the previous audit cycle.
- **Auditor follow-up requests:** Number of additional evidence requests during fieldwork, compared with the last report.
- **Audit exceptions:** Exceptions noted in the SOC 2 or ISO 27001 report, compared year on year.

## Industry data
- 54%: Organizations spending more than five hours each week on manual compliance tasks (Swimlane survey, April 2025) ([Swimlane](https://swimlane.com/news/grc-audit-research/))
- 62%: Organizations saying their audit evidence-gathering process is at least occasionally error-prone (Swimlane survey, April 2025) ([Swimlane](https://swimlane.com/news/grc-audit-research/))
- 92%: Organizations using three or more tools to gather audit evidence (Swimlane survey, April 2025) ([Swimlane](https://swimlane.com/news/grc-audit-research/))

## Systems it connects to
Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, Okta, Microsoft Entra ID, Jira, GitHub, AWS, BambooHR, Google Workspace

## Guardrails
- The agent uses read-only service accounts for evidence collection and cannot change access, configurations or tickets in source systems.
- Risk acceptance and exception sign-off always belong to a named person, never to the agent.
- Evidence is stored in your own compliance platform or storage, with personal data minimized to what the control requires.
- Every collection run, check and human decision is logged with time, source and user, so the auditor can follow the trail.

## What teams say about this work
- A survey of IT and security decision makers found most use several tools to gather audit evidence, many spend hours each week on manual compliance tasks, and a majority say evidence gathering is at least occasionally error-prone. ([Swimlane](https://swimlane.com/news/grc-audit-research/))
- Users of a popular compliance automation platform report that auditors still ask for documented evidence that automated tests should have covered, and that uploading evidence for tools without an integration stays manual. ([G2](https://g2.com/products/vanta/reviews_and_filters?page=10))
- Reviewers of another compliance platform say its limited integrations become a burden when a system they rely on is not on the supported list. ([G2](https://g2.com/products/drata/reviews_and_filters?page=3))
- The UK regulator's guidance says records of processing activities must be kept up to date and reflect current processing, which a document written once and left alone does not meet. ([Information Commissioner's Office](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/uk-gdpr-guidance-and-resources/accountability-and-governance/guide-to-accountability-and-governance/documentation/))

## Delivery: live in 3 to 6 weeks
1. Week 1: discovery, access and a baseline of today's numbers.
2. Weeks 2–3: build the agents and connect your systems, with your rules and approvals.
3. Weeks 3–5: test on your real history, then pilot on live work with your team reviewing.
4. Weeks 4–6: staged go-live, training, dashboards and handover.

## Executive Ask questions for this workflow
- Are we on track for our SOC 2 audit, and which controls are missing evidence right now?
- Which leavers still had system access after their last day this quarter?
- What new vendors started processing customer data since our last GDPR record review?

## Frequently asked questions
### We already use Vanta or Drata. Why would we need this?
Those platforms are good at monitoring the systems they integrate with. The agent covers what they leave to people: evidence from tools outside their integration list, checks that need context across systems, such as matching HR leavers to directory accounts, drafting justifications for failing tests, and chasing control owners. It files everything back into the platform you already pay for, so your auditor works in one place.

### Does this replace our auditor or our compliance lead?
No. Your auditor still tests the controls and issues the report, and your compliance lead still owns the program. The agent does the repetitive collection, checking and follow-up. It cannot accept a risk, change a policy or mark an exception as resolved without a named person approving it, and every one of those decisions is logged for the auditor to see.

### Which frameworks does it support?
Most work is for SOC 2 under the AICPA Trust Services Criteria and ISO 27001 Annex A controls, plus GDPR and UK GDPR record-keeping. The same approach suits HIPAA, PCI DSS or customer security questionnaires, because the agent maps controls to evidence sources rather than to one fixed framework. We set the mapping with your compliance lead during the build.

### How long does it take to go live?
Live in 3 to 6 weeks. We begin by mapping controls to evidence sources and owners. Then we connect your identity provider, HR system, ticketing, code repositories and compliance platform with read-only access, and run collection against the previous quarter so your compliance lead can check the results before it runs on a live schedule. Timing around your audit window is planned with you.

### What does it cost?
Cost is quoted after a short scoping call. It depends on how many frameworks and controls are in scope, how many systems hold evidence and how many of them lack an existing integration. We review your current control list and evidence spreadsheet on the call, then send a written scope so you can see exactly what will be collected and checked.