How we achieved SOC2 and HIPAA compliance in just two months

Security in mind from day one

In October 2024, we announced that Browserbase is SOC 2 Type I certified and HIPAA compliant.

While achieving SOC 2 and HIPAA compliance required dedicated engineering effort, we saw it as a crucial investment. We prioritized these certifications to enable our customers to process sensitive data with confidence, especially as an early-stage company. Our existing security practices made this certification process straightforward, setting a strong foundation for handling mission-critical workloads.

Our Cause

Many organizations recognized how Browserbase could enhance their products and systems. We made it our priority to obtain these certifications so they could seamlessly integrate our platform into their workflows.

This was especially important for healthcare organizations handling Protected Health Information (PHI), where having proper security certifications was essential for enabling collaboration.

We recognized that unlocking these markets required both certifications:

• Healthcare companies, hospitals, clinics, and pharmaceutical customers needed HIPAA

• Enterprise customers required SOC2 audit documentation

• Many prospects wouldn't even start conversations without compliance

• Certifications served as a competitive differentiator

By achieving both SOC2 and HIPAA compliance, we removed these barriers and opened access to more possibilities for these organizations - allowing them to automate workflows where they previously didn’t think possible.

Our Best Practices

By planning strategically, we completed both certifications in just 2 months instead of the typical 1-2 year timeline.

Getting SOC 2 and HIPAA certified can be daunting for startups, but our early architectural decisions made the process remarkably smooth. Since we’ve had best practices from day one, we built a natural pathway to compliance.

Our core development practices and essential compliance practices set the stage from day one:

• Enhanced cloud-level security controls

• Documentation of all security incidents and response procedures

• Rigorous code review and automated testing which allowed us to catch issues early through local and pre-merge checks, maintaining consistent quality across our codebase

• Streamlined CI/CD pipelines, multiple testing environments, and documented deployments, alongside full rollback capabilities when needed

• Vendor relationship tracking, defined employee onboarding and off-boarding processes, and mandatory security training for compliance verification

Tooling

Scalable compliance requires extensive documentation and tooling to track and verify requirements. This still wouldn’t have been achieved without the team’s work on:

1. A structured framework with specific compliance tests and tasks

2. Completing tasks for security documentation and policies

3. Having direct system integrations with our core infrastructure to verify compliance requirements

4. Comprehensive tracking of ongoing compliance status

Through focused teamwork and our efficient processes, we implemented these rigorous compliance requirements in a short span of time.

This demonstrates our team's ability to execute rapidly and effectively on complex requirements. It showcases not just technical capabilities, but also our commitment to delivering results efficiently while maintaining high standards.

Looking Ahead

While we've achieved SOC2 Type 1 compliance in record time, we view this as just the beginning. Our current focus is maintaining these standards while planning for the more rigorous SOC2 Type 2 certification that represents our next level of maturity.

As our organization grows, we're strengthening our security infrastructure through enhanced off-boarding protocols and automated access management systems. We're bringing other solutions aimed to bolster our InfoSec capabilities and serve as the foundation of our security program.

Recognizing that compliance requires constant vigilance, we maintain rigorous monitoring and regular updates to uphold our SOC2 and HIPAA standards, ensuring we protect all sensitive data in our care.

To learn more about how Browserbase's HIPAA and SOC2 compliance can benefit your organization, please reach out to our team with any questions.