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The Cloud Marketplace Company Achieves ISO 27001 and GDPR Compliance

  • September 11, 2025

Product

ISO 27001, GDPR

Industry

Cloud Computing

Company size

50 employees

Location

Lyon, France

Partner

Prescient Security

The cloud marketplace axipro compliance

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Introduction

In today’s digital economy, cloud platforms run the backbone of business operations. But with opportunity comes risk. Customers demand proof that their data is secure, and regulators set strict requirements.

That’s why The Cloud Marketplace Company SAS, based in Lyon, France, decided to pursue ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance. With a fast-growing platforms, WeTransact, they knew certification was the key to unlocking bigger contracts and building long-term trust.

The challenge? They had just six weeks to prepare for both frameworks without slowing down their rapid pace of innovation. To make it possible, they turned to Axipro as their advisory partner and Prescient Security as the independent audit partner.

About The Cloud Marketplace

The Cloud Marketplace Company is a software development company helping businesses drive revenue through Azure Marketplace. Their flagship platform, WeTransact, streamlines marketplace operations , making it easy for companies to transact big deals and move faster – with confidence.

With a team of 50 employees, they run operations on Azure. This cloud approach gives them flexibility but also adds layers of complexity when it comes to managing compliance and security.

For their leadership team, ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance weren’t just about certifications. It was about credibility. It was about showing every customer, from startups to enterprises, that their platforms are secure by design.

Challenge: Scaling & Upgrading Compliance

As a scaling cloud marketplace provider, the company faced a set of urgent challenges:

  • Client pressure: Enterprise customers required ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance before signing long-term contracts.
  • Tight deadline: They needed to prepare for certification within just six weeks.
  • Complex infrastructure: Running on Azure meant doubling the effort for documenting and aligning security controls.
  • Growing responsibilities: With a lean team, every hour spent on compliance was an hour not spent improving their platforms.

The stakes were high. Without certifications, they risked stalled deals and lost opportunities. With them, they could accelerate growth and enter new markets with confidence.

Solution: Axipro’s Guided Transition

The Cloud Marketplace Company didn’t want compliance to slow them down. They needed structure, clarity, and accountability. That’s where Axipro came in as the advisory partner.

We guided their leadership team through a clear roadmap for ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance. Every milestone was mapped out. Every responsibility was clarified. Instead of guessing what auditors would ask for, the team had a checklist and coaching at every step.

At the same time, Prescient Security, the independent audit partner, provided oversight and assurance. Together, the advisory and audit approach gave the company the confidence to move forward without derailing day-to-day operations.

Jack, one of the leaders at The Cloud Marketplace Company, summed it up perfectly:

The process felt less like a burden and more like a growth step. With Axipro’s guidance, we didn’t just prepare for certification; we understood why it mattered to our business.

Results: Smooth Audit, Stronger Governance

Six weeks later, the effort paid off. The Cloud Marketplace Company reached critical milestones:

  • Successfully achieved ISO 27001 certification.
  • Demonstrated full GDPR compliance for data protection.
  • Built a scalable security framework across AWS and Azure.
  • Increased client trust, leading to stronger enterprise relationships.
  • Improved internal confidence, with employees trained on compliance responsibilities.

For them, ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance was more than a checkbox. It became a catalyst for growth, giving their customers tangible proof of security and governance.

Why The Cloud Marketplace Chose Axipro

The decision to work with Axipro came down to three simple factors:

  1. Advisory Expertise – Our experience in guiding fast-growth companies through certifications gave them clarity and direction.
  2. Quick Responsiveness – With just six weeks on the clock, they valued our ability to adapt and respond without delay.
  3. Proven Referrals – Like many of our clients, The Cloud Marketplace Company came to us through strong industry referrals, reinforcing our reputation as a trusted compliance advisor.

For The Cloud Marketplace Company, the combination of Axipro’s advisory support and Prescient Security’s independent auditing made all the difference in reaching ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance without losing momentum.

Ready to Start Your Compliance Journey?

For The Cloud Marketplace Company, achieving ISO 27001 and GDPR compliance was about more than passing an audit. It was about proving to customers that their data is safe, their platforms are secure, and their business is built on trust.

Your company can do the same. Whether you’re scaling fast, serving enterprise clients, or preparing to expand into new markets, certifications like ISO 27001 and GDPR are no longer optional, they’re essential.

At Axipro, we’ve supported organizations of all sizes in navigating compliance with clarity and confidence. With our advisory support, structured milestones, and trusted audit partners like Prescient Security, we help you stay focused on growth while preparing for certifications that open doors.

Ready to take the first step? Book a free consultation with Axipro today and simplify your journey to compliance.

Partner Meet Grow with Axipro today to navigate ISO 27001 and GDPR with clarity and confidence.

ISO 27001 Consultant vs. Software: Which Is Faster?

Pedro Dias September 29, 2026

Compliance software collects the evidence. A consultant builds the system that evidence is meant to prove. That’s the real difference in the ISO 27001 consultant vs software decision, and most teams only figure it out after they’ve bought one and realized they still need the other. Below, we compare what each route covers, where it breaks down, and what it costs you in time, money, and your team’s hours. Short version: software on its own works for a small group of companies. For most SaaS and tech scale-ups trying to get an enterprise deal over the line, consultant-led implementation on a compliance platform is the faster and safer path to a certificate. Quick Answer: Consultant, Software, or Both? Software-only works if you already have an in-house security lead who’s taken a company through ISO/IEC 27001 before and has the time to own the project. Consultant-only still makes sense if you run mostly on-premise or legacy systems that platforms barely integrate with. For everyone else, which means most cloud-native companies under a few hundred people, a hybrid works best: a platform to handle evidence and monitoring, and a consultant to build the management system and stand behind it in front of an auditor. Here’s why. What an ISO 27001 Consultant Handles ISO/IEC 27001:2022 is a management system standard. Clauses 4 to 10 cover how you run information security, and Annex A lists 93 controls you pick from based on risk. Almost none of it is box-ticking. Most of it comes down to judgment calls about your business, and that’s what you’re paying a consultant for. Scoping, Gap Analysis and Risk Assessment Scope is the first decision you make, and the most expensive one to get wrong. Go too wide and you’ll spend months on controls for systems no customer asks about. Go too narrow and the certificate won’t get through the procurement review it was supposed to pass. A consultant scopes around the deals you’re trying to close, runs a gap analysis, and builds a risk assessment based on your real assets and threats. That’s the document auditors dig into hardest. ISMS Documentation and Policy Writing The standard asks for a specific set of documents: the ISMS scope, information security policy, risk assessment and treatment methodology, Statement of Applicability, risk treatment plan, and evidence of competence, monitoring, internal audit, and management review. A consultant writes these around how your company works day to day, instead of how a template imagines it works. Auditors check whether you follow your own procedures, so a mismatch shows up fast. Internal Audit and Certification Audit Support You need an internal audit before certification, and Clause 9.2 says the auditor has to be objective and impartial. In a small company, the people who built the ISMS can’t credibly audit it, so most teams outsource it through ISO 27001 internal audit services. A good consultant also gets your team ready for the Stage 1 and Stage 2 audits, joins the conversations that matter, and handles corrective actions if the auditor raises nonconformities.  What ISO 27001 Compliance Software Handles Compliance automation platforms, often called GRC platforms, have changed how cloud-native companies get certified. They’re very good at the repetitive, evidence-heavy side of the work. Automated Evidence Collection and Continuous Control Monitoring The platform plugs into your cloud provider, identity provider, code repos, HR system, and device management tools, then pulls evidence on its own. It’ll flag an unencrypted storage bucket, an ex-employee who still has access, or a laptop without disk encryption. For technical controls, that saves weeks of screenshots and spreadsheet tracking. Policy Templates and Annex A Control Mapping Most platforms come with a policy library and map each control to the ISO 27001 clauses and Annex A. You get a starting point and a clear view of which controls have evidence and which don’t. Auditor Access and Ongoing Compliance Tracking Auditors can log in and review evidence themselves, which cuts down fieldwork. After you’re certified, dashboards show when controls slip between surveillance audits, so you aren’t rebuilding evidence from scratch every year. Where Each Approach Falls Short Neither route covers everything by itself. The good news is that the ways each one fails are predictable, so you can plan around them. Limits of Compliance Automation Platforms A platform can tell you a control is failing. It can’t decide your scope, run your risk assessment, write a policy that matches your operations, convince your CTO to change the offboarding process, or explain to an auditor why you excluded a control from your Statement of Applicability. Templates can also make you feel further along than you are. A dashboard at 90% can hide an ISMS that won’t survive Stage 1, because the missing 10% is the management system itself. Insider Note: The Stage 1 problem we see most on software-only projects is a risk assessment copied straight from the platform’s default risk library. The risks are generic, the scores are almost identical, and nothing ties back to the company’s own assets. Auditors notice within minutes, and it weakens the Statement of Applicability that’s built on it. The other problem is ownership. Software assumes someone inside the company will drive the project. At most startups that’s a CTO or ops lead who already has a full-time job, and the subscription renews whether the work gets done or not. Limits of a Consultant-Only Approach A consultant working without automation spends billable days on things a platform does for free, like chasing screenshots, updating evidence trackers, and collecting the same proof again before every surveillance audit. You pay more and wait longer. You also end up with a program that’s only accurate on the day it’s handed over. Once the engagement ends, the evidence goes stale and year-two surveillance turns into a scramble. ISO 27001 Consultant vs Software: Side-by-Side Comparison Factor Consultant only Software only Hybrid (consultant + platform) Time to audit readiness 3 to 6+ months Highly variable; depends on internal expertise As little as 6 weeks for well-scoped

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Uzbekistan AI Regulation 2026: Law ZRU-1115 Explained

Pedro Dias September 27, 2026

Uzbekistan regulates artificial intelligence through two documents. The first is Law ZRU-1115, signed on 21 January 2026. It amends existing legislation to define AI, stops anyone from basing decisions about people’s rights on AI output alone, and fines companies that process personal data unlawfully with AI. The second is the set of Ethical Rules approved by Order No. 3787, in force since 17 June 2026, which spell out what developers, implementers, and users actually have to do. Uzbekistan hasn’t passed a standalone AI act, and its rules don’t sort systems into risk tiers or require conformity assessments. The framework is short and blunt, and it’s already enforceable. Below we walk through what each document requires, who it applies to, how it stacks up against the EU AI Act, and what a company using AI in Uzbekistan should do next. Uzbekistan AI Regulation at a Glance (TL;DR) Instrument Date What it does Who it binds Law ZRU-1115 Signed 21 January 2026 Defines AI in law, sets general rules for AI-built information resources and systems, bans legally significant decisions based only on AI, adds fines for unlawful AI processing of personal data State bodies, organizations, website owners, anyone processing personal data with AI Order No. 3787 (Ethical Rules) Registered 14 March 2026, in force 17 June 2026 Sets eight mandatory ethical principles and lists rights and obligations for developers, implementers, and users Individuals and companies developing, implementing, or using AI in Uzbekistan Law No. 1125 (Personal Data amendments) Adopted 26 March 2026 Limits data localization to biometric, genetic, and local telecom user data, and allows cross-border transfers under conditions Personal data operators, including AI providers AI Strategy until 2030 (RP-358) 14 October 2024 Sets national targets for AI adoption, infrastructure, and skills Government bodies What Is Law ZRU-1115? The law’s official title is a mouthful: “On making additions and changes to certain legislative acts of the Republic of Uzbekistan in connection with the regulation of relations arising from the use of artificial intelligence.” Put simply, it’s an amending law. Instead of creating a new AI code, it writes AI into laws that were already on the books. When It Was Signed and When It Took Effect The Legislative Chamber of the Oliy Majlis adopted the bill on 12 August 2025, and the Senate approved it on 1 November 2025. President Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed it on 21 January 2026. You can read the official text in Lex.uz, Uzbekistan’s national legislation database. The law set out the principles and the penalties. The day-to-day detail arrived later with the Ethical Rules, which came into force on 17 June 2026. For compliance planning, treat mid-June 2026 as the point when the whole framework started applying. Why Uzbekistan Amended Existing Laws Instead of Passing a Standalone AI Act Uzbekistan wants more AI, not less. Its national strategy sets numeric targets for adoption, investment, and local computing capacity, and a heavy EU-style act would have worked against them. So lawmakers kept it light. They defined AI, drew two hard lines (human control over decisions that affect people’s rights, and protection of personal data), and left the Ministry of Digital Technologies to fill in the rest through secondary rules. Businesses get less legal certainty, and the government gets to move faster. Which Laws ZRU-1115 Changes For businesses, two amendments matter most. The Law “On Informatization” (ZRU-560-II, 2003) now contains a legal definition of AI, a new article on using AI in information resources and systems, duties for website owners, and updated powers for the ministry in charge. The Code on Administrative Liability now includes an offense for processing and spreading personal data unlawfully using AI. The Legal Definition of Artificial Intelligence in Uzbekistan Under the amended Law “On Informatization,” AI is a set of technological solutions that imitate human cognitive functions, including learning on their own and solving problems, and that produce results on specific tasks comparable to what a person could do. That’s deliberately broad. It covers generative AI, machine learning classifiers, recommendation engines, and most agentic systems. The Ethical Rules add a narrower term, the AI system: software built on AI that can find, collect, store, analyze, process, evaluate, and use data, and make decisions on its own based on that data. If your product makes a decision from data, or shapes one, assume it counts. Key Rules Introduced by Law ZRU-1115 General Principles for Using AI in Information Systems and Resources The new article in the Law “On Informatization” starts from harm. Information resources created with AI, and information systems running on AI, must not harm people’s life, health, freedom, honor, or dignity, or violate their other inalienable rights. The standard is short and open-ended. It gives regulators something to enforce against without saying in advance what counts as harm. Principle-based rules like this deserve to be taken seriously precisely because the edges are undefined. Human Oversight: No Decisions on Rights and Freedoms Based Solely on AI Most coverage leads with this provision, and it’s easy to see why. When someone makes a legally significant decision that affects human rights and freedoms, they can’t rely only on conclusions produced by AI systems or AI-built information resources. AI can feed into the decision, but a person has to make it. That applies to loan denials, benefit eligibility, hiring rejections, licensing outcomes, and disciplinary action. In each case, someone needs to look at the AI output and own the final call. Insider Note: In AI governance engagements, teams rarely struggle to show that a review step exists. What they struggle to show is that the reviewer could disagree, and sometimes did. If a human clicks “approve” on every AI recommendation and nobody ever records an override, auditors will see automation with a signature on top. Build the override path and log when people use it, starting on day one. Powers of the Authorized State Body (Ministry of Digital Technologies) ZRU-1115 makes the Ministry of Digital Technologies the authorized state body for AI. Among its new jobs, it’s

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The SaaS Founder’s 6-Week SOC 2 Readiness Plan (Free Template)

Pedro Dias September 24, 2026

You can get a SaaS company ready for a SOC 2 audit in six weeks, but you’ll feel every one of them. Most published timelines say three to six months. For a company with no project owner, no identity provider, and nothing written down, that’s about right. A cloud-native startup that already has the basics in place and can protect some time is a different story, and it can fit the work into six hard weeks. This plan walks through that route one week at a time. Each week has an owner, an hour estimate, and a clear test for when it’s finished. The free Google Sheet version turns the plan into a tracker you can hand out to owners and update in your weekly standup. Before you start, know what you’re signing up for. At the end of week 6 you’ll be audit-ready, which isn’t the same as holding a Type II report. Nobody can get you a Type II in six weeks. This is also the do-it-yourself route, and it takes a lot of hours. We’ll show you where those hours go and what the faster option looks like. Is Six Weeks Realistic for Your Company? Six weeks works when most of the plumbing already exists and your job is to formalize it, fill the gaps, and prove it all works. It falls apart when you’re building the foundations and documenting them at the same time. Go through this table honestly before you promise a customer a date. Six weeks is realistic if… Plan for 10 to 16 weeks if… Your product runs on a major cloud provider You host on-premise or across several data centers You already use an identity provider with SSO Every tool has its own login and password You have fewer than about 50 employees You have multiple offices, subsidiaries, or products in scope One named person owns the project with 10 to 15 hours a week Compliance is “everyone’s job,” so in practice nobody owns it An engineer can give you 15 to 20 hours in weeks 3 and 4 Engineering is fully committed to a launch You only need the Security criteria You need Availability, Confidentiality, or Privacy on day one Landing mostly in the right-hand column doesn’t mean you should throw the plan out. Give each week two weeks instead of one and follow the same order. What “SOC 2 Ready” Means at the End of Week 6 SOC 2 doesn’t give you a certificate. An independent CPA firm examines your controls against the AICPA Trust Services Criteria and writes a report, and which of the two report types you go for decides what you can show a buyer after week 6. A Type I report checks whether your controls are designed properly on a single date. Once you’re ready, a Type I audit can start almost right away. A Type II report checks whether those controls kept working over an observation period of at least three months, and usually six to twelve. Most enterprise procurement teams want Type II in the end. Being “ready” at the end of this plan means your in-scope controls are in place, you can pull evidence for any of them on request, and your auditor is booked. From there you either start a Type I audit or open your Type II observation window. Plenty of buyers will sign with a Type I report plus a letter from your auditor saying the Type II period is underway. Important: The Type II clock doesn’t start until your controls are running. If readiness slips by a week, your Type II report slips by a week too. Founders who tell a prospect “we’ll have SOC 2 in Q3” often forget this and end up renegotiating the deal. Before Week 1: Four Decisions to Make First Settle these before the clock starts. If you change any of them halfway through, you’ll redo work. Scope. Decide which systems, teams, and data the report covers. For most SaaS companies that’s the production environment, the code repository, the identity provider, customer data stores, and any support tools that touch customer data. Corporate systems that never see customer data can usually stay out. Trust Services Criteria. Security (also called the Common Criteria) is mandatory. Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity, and Privacy are optional. Report type. Pick Type I if a deal is blocked right now and the buyer will accept it. If there’s no deadline, go straight to Type II. You’ll need it eventually, and skipping Type I saves you an audit fee. Owner and tooling. Name one person who’s accountable for the plan, and decide where your controls and evidence will live. The tooling choice gets its own section below. Pro Tip: Adding Criteria Only add optional criteria when a customer contract or security questionnaire asks for them. Each one brings more controls to set up and more evidence to collect, and you can widen the scope in next year’s audit. Spreadsheet or Compliance Software: Choosing Your Tracking Tool Every SOC 2 program needs a system of record, meaning one place where each control, its owner, its status, and its evidence live. You can run it yourself in a spreadsheet or a GRC platform, or have a consultant implement it for you. The right choice depends mostly on which report you’re after and how much of your team’s time you can spare. A spreadsheet is free and familiar. It also makes you understand your own environment before you automate any of it. For a Type I, or for a small team with a tight scope, a well-built spreadsheet can take you all the way to the audit. Axipro’s free GRC workbook for SOC 2 and ISO 27001 covers all 33 SOC 2 Common Criteria plus the optional criteria, with evidence, risk, policy, and gap trackers built in. It has no macros and opens straight in Google Sheets or Excel. A GRC platform connects to your cloud, identity provider, code repository, and HR system.

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