Startups, be prepared for Q4 with cyber in place to enable your business winning deals.
You don’t win enterprise deals by promising “we take security seriously.”
You win by showing proof, the kind a buyer can forward to their security team and get a “Yes.”
Here’s how we run it at Penchuk Cyber.
Revenue first, paperwork second.
SOC 2, ISO 27001, ISO 42001 are not trophies. They’re deal enablers. We build one control fabric and stage it: SOC 2 + 27001 for the door-opener, 42001 as soon as AI touches anything meaningful. Same policies, same evidence pipeline, no fluff.
Pentest-on-Steroids: Red + Purple to where the money flows
A pentest PDF full of findings doesn’t close a deal. We model the attack on the paths your buyers actually worry about, authentication and multi-tenancy segregation, payments and entitlements, data export and admin actions, and any AI endpoint that influences user decisions or touches sensitive data. Red Team breaks things in those flows; Purple Team turns that into detections, alerts, and runbooks your engineers can execute. The result is a clear before/after narrative your security reviewer understands: what we exploited, what you fixed, and how you’ll catch it next time. Attestation Letter the customer gets signed attestation letter that allows to show your customers that the
DDoS: prove you can take a punch
Real campaigns are short and spiky, aimed at the weakest link, L7/API, hot database paths, or a chatty third-party. We design for pressure, rate limits, surge queues, circuit breakers, and graceful degradation, then we drill with brief, ugly bursts (30–120 seconds). What buyers want to see is simple:
how fast you detect,
how fast you mitigate,
what the user impact was, and
what you changed afterward.
Put that graph in your security deck and half the debate ends.
The “Not a Sticker” Evidence Pack
Ship what a buyer can forward internally without a meeting:
One-page security overview with architecture, data flows, and trust boundaries
Concise policies mapped once to SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / ISO 42001
Asset & vendor inventories with owners and risk tiers
Testing proof: Red/Purple summary and the last DDoS drill (inputs → impact → recovery)
Risk register with remediation SLAs
A public Trust page (status history, attestation roadmap, high-level controls, and reporting channels)
Your 90-day revenue-readiness plan
Weeks 0–2 , Foundations. We baseline risk and architecture, draw clean data-flow diagrams, stand up a minimal policy set mapped once to SOC 2/27001/42001, take ownership of your asset and third-party inventory, and run a DDoS gap check. We publish Trust Page v0 so Sales has a credible destination from day one.
Weeks 2–6 , Proof. We run a Red Team against auth, payments, and admin paths; Purple Team converts those moves into detections and response runbooks. We execute DDoS Drill #1 to measure detection and mitigation end-to-end, fix the weakest link, and re-test. Out of this phase you get Evidence Pack v1, a buyer-ready security deck, and a questionnaire bank so you stop rewriting the same answers.
Weeks 6–12 , Attest & scale. We kick off SOC 2 Type I on a runway to Type II, complete ISO 27001 (SoA and internal audit prep), and scope ISO 42001 for the AI features you ship, evaluation gates, rollback paths, and model change logs. We usually add a second API-heavy drill and a focused “chaos” day for failover. In parallel, we sit with your Deal Desk so security reviews don’t stall the MSA.
Minimal policies, zero theater
Policies should be short, auditable, and alive: Information Security, Access & IAM, Secure Development & Change Management, Incident Response, Vendor Risk, BC/DR, Privacy & Data Handling, and AI Governance. Each ties to tickets, evidence, and owners. If a policy doesn’t drive action, it doesn’t belong.
Purple Team: the detection map you practice
We translate real attacker behavior into signals you rehearse quarterly, identity anomalies, suspicious app/API patterns, unusual data movement, brittle infra indicators, and AI guardrails like evaluation-gate failures or rollback triggers. Every detection has an owner, an alert route, and a runbook. Your buyer may never see this map, but they’ll feel it in how fast you answer questions.
Anti-patterns to kill early
Cert-first thinking that creates pretty documents and slow deals
Checklist pentests with no link to detections or revenue paths
DDoS as a vendor logo instead of drills with numbers
AI governance theater without evaluation gates and rollback
Quick FAQ
Do we need SOC 2 and ISO 27001? Often yes, different buyers anchor on different badges. Build one fabric and wrap it both ways.
When does ISO 42001 matter? As soon as AI touches user data or decisions, keep it lightweight and auditable.
Will a pentest PDF satisfy security teams? Not anymore. Pair Red (exploit) with Purple (detect/respond) and tell the before/after story.
How do we show DDoS resilience? With a short drill, measured detection/mitigation, and a one-slide summary you can share.
What do we do to make sales a ‘Yes’?
We run readiness on a shared control fabric that unlocks SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / ISO 42001 without duplicate work. We deliver Red + Purple on the flows your buyers scrutinize, plus DDoS drills and hardening with metrics you can put in the deck. And we co-pilot the Deal Desk so questionnaires don’t stall momentum. Outcome: fewer loops, faster signatures.
Get started
If your last call ended with “come back when you have SOC 2/ISO/AI governance,” let’s flip it. Book a revenue-readiness call with Penchuk Cyber, and leave your next review with “Send the MSA.”