How North Labs helped a national security services company rebuild its entire technology and data infrastructure from the ground up — achieving SOC 2 compliance readiness while eliminating misconfigurations, reducing costs, and enabling scalable growth.
"I enjoy working with the North Labs team because they are extremely knowledgeable and professional, as well as open to learning. We achieved what we set out to do because we worked in partnership to develop the right solution."
— Robert Atherton, Senior Software Engineer, Protos Security
Protos Security has built a unique model in the security industry — matching clients with security officers and off-duty police officers from a network of more than four thousand vetted security services providers. Part software company, part security guard management company, Protos Security handles sensitive customer data at scale every day.
To continue growing and expand its customer base, the company needed to meet the compliance standards that enterprise clients require — starting with SOC 2. The Trust Services Principles governing security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy all needed to be demonstrably met.
"Since we collect customer data, it was critical that we achieve SOC 2 compliance," said Senior Software Engineer Robert Atherton. "To do that, we needed to make our data environment more secure than it was."
But the problem ran deeper than a compliance checklist. Protos Security's existing cloud environment had accumulated misconfigurations and abandoned resources over time — unnecessarily costing money each month and creating security gaps. As the company grew, manual processes that were once manageable became liabilities.
"The way our platform was originally built, it took time and effort to work within our infrastructure. On top of that, we didn't have the level of data security that we needed. Now that we've grown, we need a technology and data infrastructure that can scale with us."
"We have a good sense of where our infrastructure relates to compliance. We won't have any surprises when we have our audit. We will have already found and mitigated all of the security issues."
"The way we had things set up, what we needed was all over the place. Now we have a one-stop shop. We're able to make a change in just one place that affects multiple resources."
"We expect to save time and money thanks to the work North Labs has done for us. Not only do we have the proper infrastructure, but we also have the tools we need to manage it."
North Labs had previously partnered with Protos Security on a database migration project. When compliance became the priority, the security company returned to North Labs for help.
"We knew we needed to have the right security controls when it came to the data we collect," said Robert. "The problem was that we didn't know what we didn't know when it came to data infrastructure security. Thankfully, North Labs was there to help."
After examining the existing environment, the North Labs team determined that patching individual misconfigurations wouldn't be enough. The best path forward was to rebuild the entire technology and data infrastructure from scratch using modern best practices — purpose-built for compliance from day one rather than retroactively patched.
North Labs created infrastructure-as-code modules and CI/CD pipelines for Protos Security's services, along with the supporting infrastructure needed to securely and efficiently deploy and manage resources in a repeatable, scalable manner. Every component was designed with compliance controls baked in — covering security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.
Once the new environment was built, the team assisted Protos Security with migrating all services from the legacy infrastructure to the new compliance-ready environment — ensuring zero disruption to their security operations.
Protos Security now operates on a modern, compliance-ready technology and data infrastructure — built from the ground up with security controls embedded at every layer. The company is fully prepared for its SOC 2 audit with confidence that no surprises will surface.
Beyond compliance, the rebuilt infrastructure eliminated abandoned resources that were costing money, consolidated management into a single streamlined interface, and gave the engineering team the tools they need to scale securely as Protos Security continues to grow its national footprint in the security services industry.
"The North Labs team demonstrated their professional skills and collaborative culture throughout the entire process," said Robert. "They were pivotal in helping us reach our goals."
Let's talk about how North Labs can help modernize your technology and data infrastructure for compliance and growth.
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