Here's a secret: your SMB clients don't want compliance. They want the benefits of compliance—winning contracts, satisfying customers, getting cyber insurance, and avoiding fines.

Your job is to deliver those outcomes as painlessly as possible. And that means automation.

The Compliance Landscape for SMBs

The frameworks your clients care about:

• SOC 2: Required by enterprise customers before signing contracts
• HIPAA: Mandatory for anyone touching healthcare data
• PCI-DSS: Required for processing credit cards
• CMMC: Coming for defense contractors
• Cyber Insurance: Not a framework, but questionnaires are basically compliance audits

The Traditional (Broken) Approach

Most MSPs handle compliance like this:

1. Client says "we need SOC 2"
2. MSP scrambles to understand requirements
3. Manual evidence collection (screenshots, exports, emails)
4. Expensive consultant engagement
5. Frantic weeks before audit
6. Pass audit, exhale, forget about it until next year

This is exhausting, expensive, and doesn't scale.

The Automated Approach

Continuous Compliance Monitoring

Instead of point-in-time audits, implement continuous monitoring:

• Automated policy checks against actual configurations
• Real-time compliance scoring dashboards
• Automatic evidence collection
• Drift detection and alerting

What to Automate

Access Controls:

• MFA enforcement verification
• Privileged access reviews
• User provisioning/deprovisioning
• Password policy compliance

Endpoint Security:

• EDR deployment status
• Encryption verification
• Patch compliance
• Antivirus status

Data Protection:

• Backup verification
• Data classification
• DLP policy enforcement
• Encryption at rest/in transit

Logging & Monitoring:

• Log collection verification
• Retention policy compliance
• Alert rule validation
• Incident response testing

Building Your Compliance Practice

Tier 1: Compliance Readiness ($500-1,500/month)

• Automated compliance scoring
• Gap analysis reports
• Basic policy templates
• Quarterly reviews

Tier 2: Managed Compliance ($1,500-4,000/month)

• Everything in Tier 1
• Continuous monitoring
• Automated evidence collection
• Audit preparation support
• Policy management

Tier 3: Full Compliance Management ($4,000-10,000/month)

• Everything in Tier 2
• Dedicated compliance analyst
• Auditor liaison
• Remediation project management
• Board reporting

The Technology Stack

What you need:

• GRC Platform: Drata, Vanta, or Fortress vCISO module
• Security tools with compliance reporting: Most modern EDR/SIEM have compliance dashboards
• Documentation system: Centralized policy and evidence repository
• Integration layer: Connect everything for automated evidence collection

Quick Wins to Start

1. Create a compliance assessment template - Use it for every prospect
2. Build a policy library - Customize once, reuse everywhere
3. Automate MFA reporting - It's required by everything and easy to track
4. Set up endpoint compliance dashboards - Show clients their security posture
5. Offer "compliance readiness" as a lead magnet - Free assessment, paid remediation

The Revenue Opportunity

Compliance services are sticky and profitable:

• Annual contracts (compliance is ongoing)
• High margins (expertise + automation)
• Expansion opportunities (one framework leads to another)
• Referrals (satisfied clients tell their network)

One MSP I work with built a $30K MRR compliance practice in 6 months—all from existing clients who didn't know they needed help.

Ready to automate compliance? Let's talk about Fortress GRC.