How Helix-DB became enterprise-ready with SOC 2
Helix-DB had enterprise customers ready to sign.
But they were blocked on one thing: SOC 2.
At the time, Helix-DB was moving fast, shipping a new enterprise product, onboarding users, and scaling infrastructure.
But like most open-source-first companies, compliance hadn’t caught up yet.
They needed a SOC 2 Type 2 report, without losing momentum or getting dragged into weeks of admin and documentation.
About Helix-DB
Helix-DB is a graph database built for modern data workloads.
It combines:
- graph queries
- vector search
- full-text search
All natively, and all built on object storage for large-scale, high-performance retrieval.
The company grew through open-source adoption, with developers pulling Helix-DB into production before any traditional enterprise motion existed.
The inflection point
As usage grew, so did inbound interest from mid-market and enterprise companies.
But a lot of deals hit the same blocker:
“Come back when you’re SOC 2 compliant.”
Helix-DB had demand.
They just didn’t have the trust layer enterprises needed.
The reality
Under the hood, Helix-DB was still operating like a fast-moving, early-stage startup:
- Monitoring existed, but no real alerting
- Backups were manual
- Access control was informal
- No formal incident response process
Processes were there, but not packaged in a way that enterprise buyers could trust.
Rebuilding for enterprise
At the same time Helix-DB was building its enterprise product, they rebuilt their infrastructure and security posture from the ground up.
They introduced:
- A dedicated enterprise architecture on AWS
- Isolated, per-customer environments (VPCs, clusters, storage)
- Automated backups and tested restoration procedures
- Centralized logging and monitoring with alerting
- Formalized access control and internal processes
This wasn’t about adding layers of bureaucracy.
It was about making what already worked visible, reliable, and auditable.
We had enterprise customers ready to move forward, but compliance was the blocker. We needed SOC 2 Type 2 fast, without slowing down the team or turning engineers into compliance people.
— Xavier Cochran, founder of Helix-DB
From “not ready” to audit-ready
Within weeks, Helix-DB had:
- A production-grade enterprise architecture
- Documented, enforced security controls
- Audit-ready policies and evidence
- A clear path to SOC 2 Type 2 completion
We didn’t have time to figure out compliance ourselves. Probo told us exactly what mattered, what didn’t, and helped us go from zero to audit-ready without slowing down the team.
— Xavier Cochran, founder of Helix-DB
Unlocking enterprise
With compliance no longer a blocker, Helix-DB could:
- move forward with enterprise deals
- engage security teams confidently
- and position their infrastructure as production-ready
Instead of slowing them down, compliance became a growth enabler.
They recently launched Helix Enterprise: “a horizontally distributed graph database that scales better and cheaper than anything else on the market.”
The takeaway
Helix-DB didn’t “pause to get compliant.”
They used compliance as a forcing function to become enterprise-ready, while continuing to ship.
