Here is How SecureSlate Helped Quality Early Years Revamp its Compliance Approach

About Quality Early Years

Quality Early Years (QEY) is a UK-based company in early childhood education innovation, dedicated to enriching learning experiences through cutting-edge technology.

Trusted by educators, parents, and institutions across the UK, QEY integrates digital solutions to foster engagement and streamline administrative processes.

“Our compliance approach is much more efficient and proactive, all thanks to SecureSlate”
— Catherine, Director, QEY

Frameworks

ISO 27001, SOC 2

Employees

31

Location

Colchester, UK

Industry

EdTech

The Problem

Catherine had ambitious plans to expand QEY across the UK. She quickly recognized the need to scale the company’s compliance program beyond ISO 27001 to meet the diverse regulatory requirements of customers across different regions.

As SOC 2 attestation became increasingly critical for accessing the UK market, Catherine and her team began working towards achieving SOC 2 compliance.

With a long-term vision of adopting multiple frameworks and regulations, QEY needed to revamp its compliance approach, improving productivity to quickly adapt to new requirements.

The team soon realized their existing compliance processes, reliant on manual efforts and Excel spreadsheets, were no longer sufficient.

“We needed to move quickly and required an approach that would automatically test controls and gather evidence.”
— Catherine, Director, QEY

To streamline their complex and inefficient compliance operations, QEY sought a solution that could unify all compliance-related entities and leverage automation for end-to-end compliance management.

Beyond its compliance program, QEY’s team wanted a proactive solution for audits that could identify risks before they escalated.

“We needed a system that could alert us before failures occurred, enabling preemptive remediation. Excel simply couldn’t provide that.”
— Catherine, Director, QEY

The Solution

After a 7-day trial evaluation, SecureSlate emerged as the right solution for QEY.

Catherine and her team started their SOC 2 journey by connecting their cloud systems to SecureSlate and getting familiar with the platform through guided onboarding sessions led by SecureSlate’s compliance experts. Once connected, the next step was tailoring their SOC 2 program.

“What impressed us most was how intuitively SecureSlate allowed us to customize our SOC 2 implementation. We could easily select only the trust services criteria that mattered to our operations.”
— Catherine, Director, QEY

With its custom integrations feature, SecureSlate connected across QEY’s HR and Tech systems into one central hub. This automated the entire compliance process, from collecting evidence to testing controls, while eliminating the need for constant back-and-forth between teams

SecureSlate provided a unified platform to manage multiple compliance frameworks efficiently. By centralizing controls, policies, and evidence in one place, QEY gained complete visibility into compliance gaps and overlapping requirements.

“With SecureSlate handling 85% of our compliance workload automatically, we reclaimed hundreds of hours previously spent on manual processes”
— Catherine, Director, QEY

Also, SecureSlate’s automated alerts for potential compliance drift enabled the team to address issues before they escalated, ensuring continuous audit readiness. This proactive approach proved invaluable during QEY’s SOC 2 Type 2 audit, where they maintained flawless compliance documentation throughout the entire observation period.

“SecureSlate alerted and reminded us to take certain steps like uploading evidence, completing security training, and launching assessments, well before the tests could fail.”
— Catherine, Director, QEY

The Impact

QEY achieved SOC 2 readiness in just 12 weeks with SecureSlate. The platform’s streamlined processes and automated workflows accelerated their compliance timeline while simultaneously advancing their broader security objectives.

“Audits are merely a checkpoint, but compliance requires continuous maintenance. SecureSlate ensures nothing falls through the cracks, even as systems evolve. It automatically monitors controls, triggers alerts, and maintains compliance.”
— Catherine, Director, QEY

Since adopting SecureSlate, Catherine observed a significant improvement in their compliance posture.

“SecureSlate distributes compliance accountability across teams, fostering greater discipline and engagement in meeting security requirements.”
— Catherine, Director, QEY

Looking ahead, QEY estimates they can add new compliance frameworks in weeks rather than months.

“SecureSlate gives us both an immediate solution and the agility to meet whatever regulations come next; that’s a strategic advantage.”
— Catherine, Director, QEY