IT Compliance Consulting Services

IT compliance is the work of proving, to a customer, an auditor or a regulator, that your systems and the people who run them follow a defined set of security and privacy rules. PS3G helps organizations of every size get there: a founder answering a first security questionnaire, a growing company that needs a SOC 2 report to close deals, or a department inside a larger organization that must meet HIPAA, CMMC or ISO 27001 on a timeline set by someone else. We scope the framework, find the gaps, write the policies, implement the controls and collect the evidence. We are not auditors: we prepare you and work with your auditor, assessor or counsel.

Compliance as a project with an end date, then a routine

The first time through, compliance is a project. You pick a framework, define what is in scope, assess the gaps, fix them, gather evidence and go through the audit or assessment. It ends with something you can hand to a customer: a report, a certificate, an assessment result or a questionnaire backed by real documents.

After that, compliance becomes a routine. Access reviews, vendor reviews, risk assessment updates, policy approvals, security training and evidence collection land on a calendar, and someone owns each one. The second year should take a fraction of the effort of the first, provided the routine was designed rather than improvised.

Two mistakes cause most of the pain we see. The first is treating compliance as a scramble that starts when a customer asks for a report. The second is buying a compliance platform before deciding which framework, systems and people are in scope. Our method fixes the order: decide, assess, remediate, then automate what is worth automating.

One more distinction matters. A compliance report proves that defined controls exist and operate; it does not, by itself, make you secure. We run compliance work alongside the security program, which is why it sits next to our information security services.

Which framework applies to you

Most organizations do not get to choose their framework; a customer, a contract or a law chooses it for them. The table below is the short version. This is general information, not legal advice, and you should verify the current official text of any law or standard before relying on it.

Framework or law	Who it applies to	What it produces	Typical trigger
SOC 2	Service organizations that hold or process customer data, mostly SaaS and IT service providers	An attestation report (Type 1 or Type 2) issued by a CPA firm against the Trust Services Criteria	A customer or prospect asks for your SOC 2 report
HIPAA	Covered entities (providers, health plans, clearinghouses) and their business associates	A documented security risk analysis, policies, safeguards and business associate agreements; no certificate exists	You handle protected health information or sell to someone who does
ISO 27001	Any organization that wants an internationally recognized information security management system	A certificate from an accredited certification body after stage 1 and stage 2 audits, with surveillance audits afterward	International customers, tenders, or a parent company standard
NIST Cybersecurity Framework	Any organization; voluntary in most sectors	A current and target profile across the Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover functions	Board or insurer wants a recognized structure without a formal audit
PCI DSS	Anyone who stores, processes or transmits payment card data	A self-assessment questionnaire or a report on compliance by a qualified assessor, depending on volume and channel	Your acquiring bank or payment processor asks
CMMC	Department of Defense contractors and subcontractors handling federal contract information or controlled unclassified information	A self-assessment or third-party assessment against NIST SP 800-171 requirements at the level your contract names	A DoD prime or contracting officer requires a CMMC level
GDPR and CCPA	Organizations processing personal data of people in the EU, or of California residents above the law’s thresholds	Privacy notices, lawful basis and records of processing, data subject request handling, processor contracts, assessments	You market to or hold data about people in those jurisdictions
State privacy laws	A growing list of US states with consumer privacy statutes similar in shape to the CCPA	Notices, opt-out mechanisms, data protection assessments for higher-risk processing	Customers in a covered state, or a contract that references the law
AI laws and standards	Developers and deployers of AI systems, especially those used in consequential decisions	An AI inventory, risk management program, impact assessments and consumer notices; alignment with NIST AI RMF or ISO 42001	You use AI in hiring, lending, insurance, healthcare or housing decisions, or a customer asks how you govern AI

Many organizations need more than one. A health-tech company often needs HIPAA plus SOC 2; a defense supplier may need CMMC and a customer questionnaire built on the NIST Cybersecurity Framework. We map controls once and reuse the evidence, so the second framework costs far less than the first. For the AI row, our AI governance services cover the inventory, risk tiers and assessments that laws such as the Colorado AI Act describe.

Our method

1. Scope. We agree which framework, systems, locations, vendors and people are in scope, and which are not. A tight scope is the single biggest cost saver in compliance work.
2. Gap assessment. We compare what you have against every requirement in scope: interviews, configuration reviews, document reviews and sample testing. You get a findings register ranked by risk and effort, not a wall of red.
3. Policies and controls. We write or rewrite the policy set in plain language your staff will follow, then implement the technical and process controls: identity and access, logging, encryption, backups, change management, vendor management, incident response and training.
4. Evidence and tooling. We decide which evidence can be collected automatically from your cloud, identity provider and ticketing systems, and which needs a human on a schedule. Where a compliance automation platform earns its keep, we configure it; where a shared drive and a calendar are enough, we say so.
5. Audit support. We help you choose an auditor or assessor, prepare the system description and control narratives, sit in on walkthroughs, and manage the request list so your team is not pulled off its work for weeks.
6. Continuous compliance. We hand over an operating calendar: who does what, how often, and where the evidence lands. If you want us to run that calendar, it becomes a managed service with defined SLAs.

Ask for a scoped gap assessment and we will tell you which framework to start with.

IT governance for growing companies

Auditors look for governance before they look for firewalls: who decides, who approves, who reviews and how exceptions are handled. An IT governance framework for a growing company does not need COBIT in full. It needs clear decision rights, an asset inventory, a change process, access management with periodic reviews, a risk register that gets updated, a short policy set and a few metrics that leadership reads.

We build that lightweight version and scale it as you grow. A ten-person company gets a one-page RACI and quarterly reviews. A department inside a larger organization gets a structure that plugs into the corporate GRC function without duplicating it. Our guides on what IT governance is and the policies every company needs show the shape of it.

Vendor and third-party risk

Every framework in the table above expects you to know who your vendors are and what data they touch. Third-party risk management starts with an inventory, tiers vendors by the data and access they have, then applies a review proportional to the tier. A payroll provider with employee data gets a questionnaire, a SOC 2 report review and a contract check; a font library does not.

We set up the inventory, the tiering rules, the questionnaire, the contract clauses (data processing agreements, business associate agreements, security addenda) and the annual review cycle. Where you are the vendor being reviewed, we prepare the answers and the evidence pack so sales is not blocked by a questionnaire.

Compliance for the software we build

PS3G builds software as well as governing it, so our development teams work inside a secure software development life cycle that produces compliance evidence as a by-product: threat modeling at design, code review on every change, dependency and container scanning in the pipeline, secrets kept out of repositories, and logging designed for investigation.

That matters when the software is in scope for your audit. Change management evidence comes straight from the pipeline and ticket history, and our testing center of excellence covers security testing alongside functional and performance work. See how we build pipelines in our DevOps and CI/CD engagements.

Engagement models

• Fixed-scope project: a gap assessment, a policy set, or readiness for one framework, with a defined deliverable and a fixed-scope quote.
• Dedicated team or staff augmentation: a compliance analyst or security engineer working inside your team on a monthly basis, scaled up or down.
• Managed services: we run the continuous compliance calendar, vendor reviews and evidence collection under defined SLAs.
• Advisory: a fractional security and compliance lead who owns the roadmap, attends audits and answers customer due diligence.

How we start: a first conversation, a short assessment, and a written proposal that names the framework, the scope and the deliverables.

Why PS3G for compliance work

We have been in business for more than ten years, with a US headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware and a delivery center in India. We build and run our own software products, including our HIPAA-compliant EHR and telehealth platform, DocVilla, so we live with risk analyses, business associate agreements, vendor reviews and customer security questionnaires ourselves rather than only advising on them.

Our engineers hold Microsoft and open-source certifications, so the controls we recommend are ones we can implement in Azure, AWS, Google Cloud or on-premises. Because we test software for a living, our evidence is built to be checked.

Related services

• All services: the full list of what we build, run and govern.
• Information security: risk assessments, security architecture and incident response that the compliance program depends on.
• HIPAA compliance consulting: security risk analysis, safeguards and BAAs for healthcare organizations and their vendors.
• SOC 2 readiness: scoping, gap assessment and evidence for Type 1 and Type 2 reports.
• CMMC compliance: NIST SP 800-171 gap assessment, SSP and POA&M for defense suppliers.
• AI governance: AI inventory, policy, risk assessment and state-law readiness.
• Data governance: classification, retention, ownership and quality, the foundation most frameworks assume.

Guides on this topic

• SOC 2 Readiness Checklist: What to Do Before You Call an Auditor
• NIST Cybersecurity Framework Explained for Smaller Companies
• IT Policies and Procedures: The 10 Every Company Needs
• What Is IT Governance? COBIT, ITIL and a Lightweight Version
• Data Classification and Data Retention Policy: Templates and Examples
• ISO 42001 Explained: The AI Management System Standard
• Colorado AI Act and US State AI Laws: What Businesses Must Actually Do

Frequently asked questions

What does IT compliance consulting include?

It includes choosing and scoping the framework, assessing your current controls against it, writing policies and procedures, implementing the missing technical and process controls, setting up evidence collection, and supporting you through the audit or assessment. Good compliance consulting also leaves you with a routine, so the second year is maintenance rather than a repeat of the first.

Should we pursue SOC 2 or ISO 27001?

It depends on who is asking. US customers, especially in software and financial services, usually ask for a SOC 2 report, while international customers, tenders and parent companies more often ask for ISO 27001 certification. The two overlap heavily, so if you may need both, we design the control set once and map it to each. Start with the one your current pipeline is asking for.

How long does it take to become compliant?

It depends on scope, how many controls already exist, and how quickly your team can make decisions. A tightly scoped SOC 2 Type 1 for a cloud-native company is a shorter project than CMMC for an organization with on-premises systems and controlled unclassified information. We give you a written plan with phases after the assessment rather than a guess before it.

Are you auditors or assessors?

No. SOC 2 reports are issued by licensed CPA firms, ISO 27001 certificates by accredited certification bodies, and CMMC certification assessments by authorized assessment organizations. Independence rules mean the firm that prepares you should not be the firm that audits you. We prepare you, help you select the auditor, and work alongside them during the engagement.

Do we need a compliance automation platform?

Not always. Platforms that connect to your cloud accounts, identity provider and ticketing system can save a lot of evidence collection effort, and they help when you maintain several frameworks. They do not write your policies, scope your systems or make decisions for you. We recommend one when the volume of evidence justifies it, and we configure it so it reflects your real environment.

Does this cover GDPR, CCPA and data privacy compliance?

Yes. Data privacy compliance work covers data mapping, privacy notices, lawful basis and consent records, data subject request handling, processor and vendor contracts, and the assessments those laws require for higher-risk processing. We handle the operational and technical side and coordinate with your privacy counsel on legal interpretation, since we are not a law firm.