Ascellus is a pioneering behavioral health provider specializing in helping injured workers restore their physical and emotional well-being. 

Leading the company’s IT, compliance, risk, and security functions, Patrick Murphy, Senior Director of Operations and End User Services, oversees a comprehensive compliance strategy—while managing these responsibilities as a one-person team.

Challenges

Before implementing Strike Graph, Ascellus faced three core challenges:

1. Scaling Compliance:
   Ascellus needed to move from a narrowly focused SOC 2 scope to a company-wide approach, involving multiple stakeholders and frameworks. Without a clear roadmap, expanding their program seemed daunting.
2. Resource Constraints:
   With Patrick as the sole IT and compliance leader, time and resources were limited. Manual processes and disorganized evidence mapping slowed progress and risked inconsistencies.
3. Stakeholder Engagement:
   Ensuring business leaders understood their role in compliance was critical. Ascellus required tools that made evidence collection intuitive and demonstrated real-time progress to executives and board members.
   
   

Solution

Faced with the challenge of scaling compliance, overcoming resource constraints, and driving stakeholder engagement, Ascellus needed a solution that streamlined processes and provided clear visibility across the organization. Ascellus adopted Strike Graph to achieve just that. 

The solution enabled Ascellus to:

• Expand SOC 2 from a limited scope to a company-wide program.
• Organize evidence and controls with simplified mapping.
• Utilize templates to create and refine policies efficiently.
• Leverage the comments feature to document procedures for the team. 

Scaling compliance across the organization

Expanding from a narrowly focused SOC 2 scope to a company-wide program seemed daunting. Strike Graph’s multi-framework mapping allowed Ascellus to seamlessly integrate multiple compliance standards, ensuring alignment across teams and stakeholders. The platform’s structured roadmap provided clarity, transforming compliance from a siloed initiative into an organization-wide effort.

Maximizing limited Resources with automation & organization

As a one-person compliance and IT team, Ascellus’ leader, Patrick, needed a platform that saved time and reduced manual effort. Strike Graph’s intuitive linking between controls and evidence makes it easy to understand and satisfy requirements. 

The control library dashboard provides snapshot views by multiple fields like status, owner, and frequency. With pre-built templates and over 250 resources in the Help Center, Ascellus was able to quickly establish and refine policies without starting from scratch.

Partnership collaboration and feature enhancements

Patrick and his team have provided key feedback on product features that are critical for making his team’s process more efficient - for example, the ability to export comments.

“One of the feature enhancements we’ve requested was the ability to export out the comments, so then I can see which evidence items are missing comments - which ones don’t have procedures - and then we can target those.”

This feature enhancement enabled seamless collaboration, allowing the team to document procedures directly within the platform for better transparency and alignment.

At Strike Graph, we believe that the partnership with our customers can help us make platform and feature enhancements that benefit everyone.

Enhancing Stakeholder Engagement & Visibility

Compliance success requires buy-in from leadership. With Strike Graph’s dashboards and reporting tools, Ascellus is able to provide real-time insights to all stakeholders and executives.  

With Strike Graph, Ascellus expanded and strengthened its compliance program and built a scalable, efficient, and collaborative approach to security and risk management.

Result

Patrick credits Strike Graph with empowering Ascellus to transform compliance into a structured and intentional process.

• Improved Efficiency:
  “It’s important that our tools are easy to use and manage because I don’t have the time to go deep into configurations. Strike Graph simplifies everything—from evidence uploads to understanding how controls tie to risks.”
• Scalable Compliance Program:
  “We’ve grown with the solution as our maturity has grown. Strike Graph is not just a tool to check the box; it’s helped us simplify controls, streamline evidence collection, and expand trust services.”
• Clear Insights for Stakeholders:
  “The dashboard and framework mapping give us the visibility we need to show executives and board members exactly where we are.”
• Customer-Centric Support:
  “What I love about Strike Graph is how responsive the team is. They’ve always helped answer questions and confirm our approach.”
  
  

 What’s next?

Ascellus plans to use Strike Graph’s Verify AI for evidence verification and post-Salesforce Health Cloud integrations to further streamline compliance.

“For any organization starting their compliance journey, Strike Graph is an easy-to-use, out-of-the-box solution with everything you need to organize evidence, align controls, and demonstrate compliance. It’s a great tool to get started and grow with as your maturity increases.”

Key Benefits for Ascellus:

1. Simplified compliance management with intuitive features.
2. Seamless scalability as their security posture evolves.
3. Responsive support tailored to their unique needs.

Strike Graph has not just been a tool for compliance—it’s been a partner in Ascellus’ growth journey, ensuring they are always ready to meet today’s challenges and prepare for tomorrow’s opportunities.