Getting Started with Gridlock

🚀 Quick Start 8 min read Updated June 2026

Gridlock is live in under 10 minutes. This guide walks you from account creation through your first agent execution, so you can see the shield working before the end of your first session.

Step 1: Create Your Account

Step 2: Set Up Your Organization

The onboarding wizard launches automatically on first login. It takes about two minutes to complete and sets the context that all six AI agents use when generating output tailored to your environment.

1. Organization Name — Enter your company's legal or trading name. This appears in all reports, compliance documentation, and outreach emails generated by MSP Hunter.
2. Industry — Select your primary vertical: Healthcare, Legal, Financial Services, Manufacturing, Education, Professional Services, Government, or Other. The Compliance agent uses this to pre-select the most relevant frameworks for your sector.
3. Team Size — Use the slider to set approximate headcount. This calibrates your security score benchmarks against organizations of similar size so your score reflects realistic peer comparisons.
4. Primary Use Case — Choose Protect My Own Business, Manage Client Security as an MSP, or Both. MSP mode activates the lead pipeline and multi-tenant client management features.

Click Save Organization. Your initial security score is calculated immediately using your industry baseline plus any signals surfaced during the environment scan.

Step 3: Run Your First Agent

Navigate to Dashboard → Agents. You will see six agent cards. Every new account gets the Threat Researcher as the recommended first run — it requires no configuration and produces an actionable result within 30 seconds.

Running the Threat Researcher

1. Click the Threat Researcher card to open it.
2. In the prompt field, type a question or paste a CVE ID. For example:
   What is the current risk from CVE-2024-3094 and what systems should I check?
3. Click Execute. The button shows a spinner while the AI layer processes the request — typically 15–30 seconds.
4. Results include: threat summary, CVSS severity, MITRE ATT&CK technique mapping, affected vendor list, and step-by-step remediation guidance.
5. Click Save to Events to log the finding, or Add to CVE Watchlist to have the agent monitor for future intelligence updates on this CVE.

Step 4: Understand Your Security Score

The security score is a composite 0–100 rating displayed as an animated gauge on your dashboard overview. It is recalculated whenever new events are logged, an agent execution completes, or you trigger a manual rescore from Dashboard → Security Score.

Score Dimensions

The overall score is built from five equally weighted sub-scores, each contributing 20 points:

A new account typically starts in the 40–55 range. Completing your compliance framework, resolving open alerts, and running regular agent checks all move the score upward. A score above 80 is strong for most SMB environments; above 90 is enterprise-grade.

Step 5: Set Up Your First Compliance Framework

Navigate to Dashboard → Compliance. Gridlock supports four major frameworks:

SOC 2 HIPAA NIST CSF CIS Controls

Based on the industry you selected during org setup, Gridlock recommends the most relevant framework and pre-populates your gap analysis. You can enable multiple frameworks simultaneously.

Running Your First Audit

1. Click Enable Framework next to your recommended framework — for example, HIPAA for healthcare organizations or SOC 2 for SaaS businesses.
2. Click Run Audit. The Compliance Agent analyzes your configuration, event history, and policy documentation against the framework's controls.
3. The audit completes in 1–3 minutes. Results show a completion percentage, a breakdown of passing and failing controls, and a prioritized remediation queue.
4. Click any gap item to see the specific control requirement, current evidence status, and step-by-step remediation instructions.
5. For controls with automated remediation available, click Auto-Remediate. For manual controls, download the relevant policy template from the Templates library.

Step 6: Invite Your Team

Go to Dashboard → Accounts → Team to manage members. Gridlock uses two roles:

• Admin — Full access: can run all agents, view all data, manage billing, invite and remove members, and change organization settings.
• Member — Operational access: can run agents, view events and alerts, and submit tickets. Cannot access billing, remove members, or change org settings.

Sending an Invitation

1. Click Invite Team Member.
2. Enter their email address and select their role (Admin or Member).
3. Click Send Invite. They receive a registration link valid for 48 hours. When they accept, they appear in your team list immediately.

Step 7: Connect Integrations

Integrations extend what the AI agents can see and do. Navigate to Dashboard → Integrations to view available connections.

OAuth-based integrations (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace) open an authorization popup — grant the requested permissions and the connection is live immediately. API-key integrations show a modal where you paste the key from the third-party dashboard.

Integrations are optional but strongly recommended. Connected integrations improve the accuracy of your security score, give agents richer context for their analysis, and enable automated alert correlation across your full environment.

Step 8: Next Steps

You are now fully set up. Here is what experienced Gridlock users do in their first week:

• Run the Threat Researcher on your five most critical systems and add any flagged CVEs to the watchlist.
• Complete at least 60% of your primary compliance framework to unlock the audit-ready report generator.
• Turn on daily summary notifications (Dashboard → Settings → Notifications) for a morning briefing on overnight threat activity.
• If you are on Pro or Ultimate: create your first MSP Hunter campaign targeting your primary vertical and geography.
• Set up the Webhook integration to push critical alerts to your team Slack or Microsoft Teams channel.
• Review the First 30 Days guide in the sidebar for a week-by-week maturity roadmap tailored to MSPs.
• Bookmark the API Endpoints reference if you plan to build automation or custom integrations around Gridlock data.

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