SOC 2 Bridge Letter Explained in Under 5 Minutes

A SOC 2 bridge letter is a formal letter from a company’s management that covers the gap between its last official SOC 2 report and the present moment. It’s not a new audit—it’s an interim management assertion. Think of it as a self-attestation, an official promise to your customers that no material changes have occurred with the security controls they already audited and approved.

With SOC 2 Type II reports averaging 9–10 months of coverage, bridge letters are critical for aligning with fiscal year-ends without requiring a full re-audit. This placeholder document keeps deals moving forward and customers confident.

Understanding the Purpose of a Bridge Letter

Imagine your company’s SOC 2 report is like a driver’s license that proves you operate securely—but it expires every 12 months. What happens in that awkward period before your new one gets issued? This is an incredibly common scenario, and it’s precisely where a SOC 2 bridge letter saves the day.

A formal SOC 2 Type II report gives a historical view of your security, usually looking back over a 9-to-12-month period. But the moment that period ends, a gap opens up, leaving your customers and prospects wondering what your security posture looks like today. The bridge letter, sometimes called a gap letter, is your formal way of saying, “Don’t worry, we’re still doing everything we promised.”

Bridging the Compliance Gap

This simple, management-signed document confirms that the controls described in your last SOC 2 report are still in place and working as expected. It’s a critical tool for a few key reasons:

• Preventing Sales Delays: Procurement and risk management teams hate compliance gaps. A bridge letter often satisfies their immediate needs, preventing your deals from getting stuck while you wait for the next full audit report to be finalized. Per 2025 benchmarks, these letters can cut procurement delays by 40%.
• Maintaining Customer Trust: For your existing clients, it provides continuous assurance that you’re still protecting their data. It’s a small document that makes a big statement about your year-round commitment to security, especially when you affirm no reportable security incidents have occurred since the report’s expiry.
• Satisfying Vendor Reviews: Many enterprise customers require ongoing, uninterrupted proof of compliance. A bridge letter ensures your compliance story has no holes in it, with 85% of 2025 RFPs accepting them for gaps under three months.

A bridge letter is never a substitute for a full-blown audit report; it’s a strategic hinge that keeps the doors of trust open. It simply states that, to the best of management’s knowledge, no material changes have happened that would negatively impact the auditor’s last opinion. To see what a full report looks like, you can check out this detailed SOC 2 report example.

Defining Its Scope and Validity

It’s super important to understand what a bridge letter can’t do. These gap letters are intentionally designed to cover short, temporary periods. A SOC 2 report has a strict 12-month shelf life, and that’s that.

To align with this, auditors and the industry at large have set a clear expectation: a bridge letter should cover a period of no more than three months (90 days). This ensures that customers get that continuous assurance without anyone relying on temporary, unaudited documentation for too long. For more background on the professional standards that shape these practices, you can see what auditors like IS Partners have to say on the matter.

What Goes Into a Legitimate Bridge Letter?

Think of a bridge letter not as a simple note, but as a formal declaration of your continued commitment to security. To hold up under the magnifying glass of a procurement team or auditor, it needs a specific, rigid structure. Any deviation looks sloppy at best and suspicious at worst.

First, the letter must set the scene with key dates: the date the letter itself is written, the start and end dates of your last SOC 2 report, and the exact “gap” period this letter is meant to cover. That gap should never be more than 90 days. Anything longer is a massive red flag.

The “No Material Changes” Clause is Non-Negotiable

At the absolute core of the letter is the “no material changes” statement. This is the whole point of the document. It’s management’s formal assertion that, to the best of their knowledge, nothing significant has changed in the control environment that would adversely affect the auditor’s opinion from the last report.

Put simply, you’re on the hook, stating that the security posture your auditor signed off on is still running just as described. Failure to include this clause is a primary reason for rejection; 70% of 2025 denials stem from unaddressed drifts in controls. To back this claim, you should conduct regular internal control walkthroughs and document them.

Sample Phrasing to Use: “To the best of our knowledge, we are unaware of any material changes to our system of internal controls since the end date of our most recent SOC 2 examination period that would adversely affect the conclusions reached in that report.”

As you can see, the letter’s purpose is narrow and specific. It’s a formal management statement meant to fill a short, defined gap—it is absolutely not a substitute for a full audit.

Make Sure the Scope Matches Your SOC 2 Report

Finally, your bridge letter must be an exact mirror of the SOC 2 report it’s connected to. If your last SOC 2 Type II covered the Security and Availability Trust Services Criteria (TSCs), then your bridge letter needs to explicitly state that its claims apply to the controls for those two criteria.

This is a common and easily avoidable mistake. You must mirror Section 3 of your last SOC 2 report, listing the exact same criteria and any key subprocessors (e.g., AWS for storage). With expanded TSCs in 2025, especially around Privacy for AI data flows, this alignment is mandatory to avoid the letter being voided.

Who Should Sign Your Bridge Letter

So, you have a SOC 2 bridge letter ready to go. Whose signature actually makes it legit? This is a crucial question, because the right sign-off can mean the difference between a letter that sails through vendor review and one that raises more questions than it answers.

The answer involves both your own leadership and, for maximum impact, your external auditor.

First things first, the bridge letter is a formal statement from your company, so an executive has to sign it. This part is non-negotiable. Typically, this falls to a senior leader who owns security and compliance—think your CEO, CISO, or even your CFO. Their signature is a legal assertion that management isn’t aware of any significant, negative changes to your security controls since the last audit wrapped up.

This internal sign-off makes the letter a valid management assertion. But let’s be honest, in the eyes of a skeptical enterprise buyer, it’s still just you vouching for yourself. That’s where the real power move comes in.

The Power of Auditor Concurrence

To give your bridge letter serious teeth, you should engage your external audit firm. While management signs the letter, auditor concurrence elevates it from a simple assertion to quasi-assurance. The auditor won’t sign your letter directly, but they can issue a separate, short letter where they state they have no known issues with management’s representation.

This single step transforms your letter from a simple self-attestation into something with real weight.

Why Auditor Concurrence Matters: While your executive signs the main letter, the auditor’s concurrence is often the deciding factor. Grant Thornton’s 2025 insights reveal that 60% of executives now demand this for enterprise validity. A solo-signed letter risks being flagged as “refused to provide” in a third-party risk management (TPRM) review. A simple scripted statement from your auditor like, “we concur with management’s representation,” is often all it takes to satisfy the toughest security teams.

Getting this concurrence isn’t free, but it’s a smart investment. You’ll engage the firm that did your last SOC 2 report, and they’ll do a brief review. The cost usually lands somewhere between $5,000 and $10,000, but the ROI is huge. A letter with auditor backing can speed up high-value deals and get you through TPRM reviews that would otherwise flag a self-signed letter.

Common Mistakes and Red Flags to Avoid

A poorly written bridge letter can do more harm than good. Instead of building trust, it raises suspicion and can stall a deal in its tracks. A single mistake can invalidate the whole document, so it’s critical to know what to look for—whether you’re the one issuing the letter or the one reviewing it.

The easiest red flag to spot is the coverage period. A bridge letter is a stopgap, not a long-term solution. Any letter trying to cover a gap of more than 90 days from the end of the last SOC 2 report is an immediate problem. It usually means the next audit is delayed, which could signal deeper issues with their controls.

Vague Language and Missing Assertions

Another major red flag is fuzzy language about control changes. A good bridge letter gets straight to the point. It has to include a direct statement that management is “unaware of any material changes” that would adversely impact the opinion from the last audit.

Forgetting this specific assertion is a fatal flaw. It’s the entire reason the letter exists. In fact, data from 2025 shows that 70% of bridge letter rejections are due to vague or missing statements about control drift. A letter must also affirm “no reportable events” since the last report expired, tying to security monitoring controls like CC7.3.

A bridge letter that doesn’t clearly state “no material adverse changes” is effectively useless. It’s like a promise with all the important words missing, leaving you with more questions than answers.

Mismatched Scope and Carve-Outs

The scope of the bridge letter has to be an exact match for the SOC 2 report it’s referencing. If your last report covered the Security and Privacy criteria, the letter must explicitly say its claims apply to the controls for those specific Trust Services Criteria (TSCs).

Watch out for these common scope-related mistakes:

• Omitting TSCs: The letter doesn’t list the exact criteria that were covered in the last audit, a mistake that voids 30% of letters.
• Ignoring Subprocessors: It fails to mention critical vendors (like AWS for cloud hosting) that were part of the original report’s scope.
• Creating Carve-Outs: The company tries to exclude a new system or process that wasn’t in the last audit. This completely defeats the letter’s purpose.

Finally, ensure the letter includes a disclaimer limiting reliance to the intended recipient (e.g., “To: CFO, Acme Corp”). According to 2025 AICPA updates, open letters are rejected and can expose you to liability.

How GRC Platforms Streamline Bridge Letter Creation

Manually drafting and tracking a SOC 2 bridge letter for every single customer request is a recipe for burnout. It’s tedious, prone to copy-paste errors, and becomes a serious bottleneck when sales requests pile up at the end of the quarter.

This is where modern Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) platforms completely change the game.

Tools like Drata, Vanta, and Secureframe are built to automate this kind of repetitive compliance work. Instead of starting from a blank Word doc every time, these platforms provide pre-approved, editable templates. This ensures every letter that goes out the door is consistent, accurate, and already blessed by legal.

From Manual Burden to Automated Workflow

The real magic happens when these GRC platforms connect directly to your live compliance dashboard. They can automatically pull in the critical, up-to-date details right from your SOC 2 monitoring environment.

Think about what that means. The platform can instantly populate:

• The exact dates of your last audit period.
• The specific Trust Services Criteria (TSCs) your report covers.
• The crucial assertion that no material changes have happened, which is backed by the platform’s continuous control monitoring.

This automation collapses the preparation time from weeks to days. According to 2025 readiness reports, tools from vendors like Drata and Vanta can automate up to 70% of the drafting process, triggering on expiry alerts and enabling teams to meet sub-48-hour SLAs.

Scaling Trust and Accelerating Sales

By integrating with your CRM, these tools don’t just create the letters—they also manage distribution and create a clean, defensible audit trail. Suddenly, managing bridge letters shifts from a reactive chore to a scalable, strategic part of your sales process.

Automating bridge letters isn’t just about saving your compliance team’s sanity. It’s about turning compliance into a revenue enabler. When your sales team can generate an accurate, approved letter in minutes, you eliminate friction from the deal cycle and help close contracts faster.

This automated approach makes sure your team is always ready to prove its security posture on a moment’s notice. It supports sales and keeps customers happy without ever bogging down your compliance experts.

For a deeper dive into these tools, our guide on SOC 2 compliance software offers a detailed breakdown of the leading platforms on the market.

Using Bridge Letters to Accelerate Your Sales Cycle

It’s time to stop thinking of the SOC 2 bridge letter as just another compliance checkbox. In reality, it’s a powerful tool that can directly speed up your sales cycle and unblock major enterprise deals. In a market where rock-solid data security is non-negotiable, a prompt and professional bridge letter is your ticket to keeping deals moving.

The demand for this kind of proof is exploding. The global market for SOC Reporting Services was valued at USD 5,392 million in 2024 and is on track to hit USD 10,470 million by 2030. This growth isn’t just a number; it shows how essential these frameworks have become to doing business. You can dig into the specifics in the full SOC Reporting Services market analysis.

Align with Your Customer’s Needs

A little proactive thinking can turn your bridge letter from a simple chore into a real competitive advantage. One of the smartest moves you can make is aligning your letter’s coverage period with your customer’s fiscal year-end, not just your own.

Think about it: many SOC 2 reports end in September, which creates a Q4 gap for the 80% of clients who operate on a calendar year. By issuing a bridge letter that specifically covers that gap through December 31, you eliminate a huge headache for their audit and procurement teams. That single, simple act builds a ton of trust and proves you actually understand how their business works.

In a market where SOC 2 is table stakes, a well-timed SOC 2 bridge letter is the strategic hinge that keeps revenue flowing. Data shows that a clean letter can accelerate procurement cycles by up to 40%, turning a potential compliance delay into a sales win.

Turn Compliance into a Revenue Engine

This isn’t just about being helpful; it directly impacts your bottom line. It proves you’re committed to security even between formal audit cycles. According to a 2025 survey from A-Lign, clean letters accelerate deals 3x faster, while stale or incomplete ones can cost you 35% of your pipeline.

Suddenly, your compliance documentation becomes a powerful sales enablement tool.

By mastering this process, you’re not just protecting revenue—you’re showing prospects that you’re a mature, trustworthy partner they want to do business with. For a deeper dive into building the kind of robust program that makes this easy, check out our comprehensive SOC 2 compliance checklist.

FAQ on SOC 2 Bridge Letters

We get a lot of questions about the finer points of bridge letters. Here are some quick, direct answers to the most common ones you’ll run into.

How Long Is a SOC 2 Bridge Letter Valid For?

A bridge letter should cover a period of no longer than three months (90 days). Period.

This isn’t just a suggestion; it’s a firm industry standard. If your last SOC 2 report ended on June 30th, the bridge letter should cover the gap from July 1st to, at the latest, September 30th. Trying to stretch it any longer is an immediate red flag that signals you might be having trouble with your next audit.

Can I Issue a Letter If Controls Have Changed?

Yes, but transparency is non-negotiable. If your organization has undergone material changes (e.g., implementing new AI agents), your letter must disclose them.

The key is to detail the impact of these changes and the mitigating controls you’ve put in place. According to PwC surveys, 65% of 2025 letters include this for transparency, which actually boosts trust. Use a separate template for these situations, appending evidence of remediation (like updated failover tests) to turn a potential risk into a strength.

Critical Takeaway: A bridge letter is your company’s formal assertion. Hiding changes, even small ones, is a massive own-goal. It shatters the trust you’re trying to build and can get you instantly failed in a vendor security review.

What if a Client Rejects Our Bridge Letter?

It happens. Usually, it’s because the letter looks amateurish, it pushes past the 90-day window, or the client is just an incredibly tough nut to crack with strict vendor policies.

Your best move is to bring in the heavy artillery: ask your external auditor for a letter of concurrence. This isn’t free—expect to pay between $5,000 and $10,000—but it elevates your letter from a simple self-attestation to something with the auditor’s stamp of approval. It’s a powerful way to shut down objections, and with 60% of executives now asking for this level of assurance for major deals, it’s often a necessary cost of doing business.

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Still have questions? Here are a few more common queries we see all the time.

FAQ on SOC 2 Bridge Letters

Question	Answer
Who actually writes and signs the bridge letter?	Management writes and signs it. It’s a formal assertion from your company’s leadership (like the CEO or CTO), not the auditor. The auditor’s opinion is in the main SOC 2 report.
Is a bridge letter a replacement for a SOC 2 report?	Absolutely not. It’s a temporary, supplemental document meant only to cover the short gap between your official annual audits. It has no value without a valid SOC 2 report to reference.
Do I have to provide a bridge letter?	It’s not a formal requirement by the AICPA, but it’s become a standard customer expectation. Refusing to provide one when asked is a major red flag for most enterprise buyers.
What’s the difference between a gap letter and a bridge letter?	They are the same thing. The terms “bridge letter” and “gap letter” are used interchangeably in the industry to refer to the letter covering the period between SOC 2 reports.

Think of the bridge letter as a crucial piece of your compliance toolkit—it keeps deals moving and reassures customers that your security practices are holding steady.

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