Linford & Company

Who is Linford & Company?

Linford & Company LLP is a Denver, Colorado-based CPA firm founded in 2008 that performs SOC 1, SOC 2, HITRUST, HIPAA, FedRAMP, and a wide bench of other IT attestation and certification work, with a team of roughly 25-35 professionals.

The firm’s own positioning is blunt about its focus: 90% of its engagement work is SOC 2 compliance audits, making it one of the more concentrated SOC 2 pure-plays in the market rather than a generalist accounting firm that also does SOC work.

Linford & Company was co-founded by Managing Partner Newel Linford, a CPA and CISA with roughly 20 years of audit experience including nine years at a Big Four firm, and Nicole Hemmer, a Partner who spent time at Ernst & Young in Indianapolis, Chicago, and Denver before co-founding the firm. The rest of the partner group carries the same lineage: Isaac Clarke (CPA, CISA, CISSP) also came from Ernst & Young, and Rob Pierce (CISSP, CISA, CCSFP, CHQP) started as a PwC IT auditor in 2003 and has personally completed over 800 SOC examinations. That density of Big Four-trained partners, at a firm this size, is the credential Linford leads with.

What credentials does Linford & Company actually hold?

Linford & Company is a licensed CPA firm and AICPA member — the license that makes a SOC 1 or SOC 2 report an actual attestation rather than an unattested checklist.

It is enrolled in the AICPA Peer Review Program, the profession’s mandatory independent quality check on CPA firms performing attest work, and its most recent review — covering the period June 1, 2023 through May 31, 2024, dated December 19, 2024 — resulted in a pass rating. That result is publicly searchable at the AICPA Peer Review public file search.

Beyond the license and peer review, the partner bench itself is the credibility signal: five named partners hold CPA, CISA, CISSP, or CCSFP credentials, several with prior Big Four experience (Ernst & Young, PwC), and Rob Pierce’s 800+ completed SOC examinations is a volume claim the firm states directly on its own leadership page. For a buyer whose enterprise customer’s security team will scrutinize the audit firm as closely as the report itself, a licensed CPA firm with a passed peer review and a Big Four-trained partner group answers that question directly.

What SOC reports does Linford & Company issue?

SOC 2 is the firm’s core business — by its own account, 90% of its engagement volume — covering both Type I (point-in-time design review) and Type II (design plus operating effectiveness over an observation period) examinations under the AICPA’s SSAE No. 18 and AT-C 105/205 attestation standards.

Linford also runs SOC 1 examinations (Type I and Type II) under AT-C 320 for organizations whose controls affect a user entity’s financial statement assertions, alongside SOC 3 for a public-facing summary report.

On its own SOC 2 service page, Linford cites an industry cost range of $20,000-$100,000 and a SOC 1 range of $15,000-$100,000, and states it provides a fee and timeline estimate before fieldwork begins rather than quoting a fixed rate card. A first-year SOC 2 Type II engagement typically layers a readiness assessment on top of the audit itself, since most first-time clients don’t yet know where their control gaps sit.

Does Linford & Company assess HITRUST?

Linford & Company is a Certified CSF Assessor offering HITRUST assessments at all three current tiers: the 1-year e1 (entry-level security controls), the 1-year i1 (more comprehensive implementation-focused assurance), and the 2-year r2 (risk-tailored, maturity-based assessment). Partner Rob Pierce leads the HITRUST and ISO practices.

On its own service page, Linford quotes e1/i1 assessments at roughly $20,000-$100,000 annually and r2 at roughly $75,000-$250,000 annually, on top of HITRUST’s own MyCSF subscription and certification fees — and the firm’s stated advice is to complete a SOC 2 audit first, since HITRUST is generally pursued by more mature organizations further along their compliance roadmap.

Does Linford & Company do FedRAMP?

Partner Ray Dunham, a former Air Force communications and computer systems officer, leads Linford’s FedRAMP practice, which helps cloud service providers obtain their Authorization to Operate (ATO) to serve federal agencies.

The firm’s service line also extends to GovRAMP, NIST 800-53, NIST 800-171, and CMMC Level 2 certification assessments as a Cyber AB-authorized C3PAO — a materially broader government-framework bench than most boutique SOC 2 shops carry in-house.

What should buyers know about ISO and Other Frameworks?

Linford’s service list additionally covers ISO/IEC 27001:2022, ISO/IEC 27701:2025 (privacy information management), ISO/IEC 42001:2023 (AI management systems), ISO 9001, ISO 22301 (business continuity), PCI DSS, and CSA STAR.

That is an unusually wide framework menu for a 25-35 person firm; it means a company that starts with Linford for SOC 2 has a plausible path to add ISO 27001 or another framework without switching auditors, though the depth of Linford’s practice in each secondary framework is less established publicly than its SOC 1/SOC 2/HITRUST core.

Does Linford & Company also sell penetration testing?

Linford & Company also sells penetration testing as a standalone service line, covering external, internal, web application, and wireless testing using white-box, grey-box, and black-box methodologies.

If your compliance roadmap includes both a SOC 2 report and a pen test, the independence-safe posture is to have the test performed by a different provider than the CPA firm issuing your SOC 2 opinion — under AICPA independence rules, an auditor that evaluates a penetration test it performed itself for the same client creates a self-review consideration, since the test result becomes part of the control environment the audit then assesses. If you’re considering Linford for both services, raise the separation question explicitly before you sign, rather than assuming the two should be bundled into one engagement.

How much does a Linford & Company SOC 2 audit cost?

Linford & Company does not publish a fixed rate card; it quotes each SOC 2 engagement after scoping. Our own estimated range for a Linford SOC 2 engagement is $13,000-$35,000 for a Type I and $18,000-$58,000 for a Type II — directional figures based on comparable-firm pricing, not numbers confirmed by Linford.

Linford’s own service pages separately cite an industry-wide SOC 2 cost range of $20,000-$100,000, which is a market benchmark the firm publishes, not a Linford-specific quote. For a number tied to your actual scope, request a quote and we will route it to Linford for a ballpark.

How long does a Linford & Company SOC 2 audit take?

Linford’s fieldwork-to-report window is about 3 to 8 weeks by our estimate, matching the firm’s “a few weeks” language for SOC 1 Type I. Type II still needs the observation period before that window starts.

Linford’s own guidance is that Type II examinations need at least six months of auditable activity (SOC 1) or typically a 12-month period (SOC 2) before the report can be issued, so a first Type II engagement should be planned around a 3-12 month runway, not the fieldwork window alone.

Who is Linford & Company a good fit for?

Linford fits buyers whose core need is SOC 1 or SOC 2 from a SOC-specialist CPA, including teams that may later add HITRUST, FedRAMP, or GovRAMP. Partner-level CPAs and CISAs on the engagement is the staffing pitch.

Best fit for:

• Companies whose primary need is a SOC 1 or SOC 2 report from a firm where SOC work is the core business, not a side practice
• Organizations that may eventually need HITRUST, FedRAMP, or GovRAMP alongside SOC 2 and want a firm that already carries that bench in-house
• Buyers who weight partner-level credentials heavily — Big Four-trained CPAs and CISAs directly on the engagement team
• Mid-size and larger organizations, including those with government or healthcare customers, given Linford’s FedRAMP and HITRUST practices

Not a fit — look elsewhere if:

• You want a firm whose public marketing centers a large tooling/GRC-platform integration story (Drata, Vanta, Secureframe partnerships); Linford does not publicly advertise formal GRC platform partnerships the way some competitors do
• You need same-firm penetration testing bundled with your SOC 2 audit without addressing the independence question first
• You’re deep in a single niche framework like ISO 42001 or CSA STAR and want a firm whose named track record in that specific framework runs deeper than a service-page listing

When should a buyer shortlist Linford & Company?

Linford & Company is a Denver-based, AICPA peer-review-passed CPA firm built around SOC 1 and SOC 2 work — by its own account, 90% of its business — backed by a partner group with genuine Big Four pedigree, including one partner with over 800 completed SOC examinations.

It also carries an unusually broad secondary bench (HITRUST, FedRAMP, GovRAMP, CMMC, ISO 27001/27701/42001, PCI, CSA STAR) for a firm its size, so it can plausibly grow with a client’s compliance roadmap. Our estimated $13k-$35k Type I / $18k-$58k Type II range and 3-8 week fieldwork window are directional; get a scoped quote for your specific environment. If you also need penetration testing, scope it as a separate engagement or confirm how Linford handles the independence question before bundling it with the audit.