Are You SOC 2 Certified? If Not, Then Here is What You Need to Know
Information security is a significant consideration for all organizations, including those that outsource their key business operations to third-party vendors like cloud computing and SaaS providers. SOC2 compliance is the minimum requirement for many businesses looking for a SaaS provider but is concerned about their security. Unfortunately, many providers don’t know how to implement SOC2 compliance requirements, mainly because they are inherently unclear.
Today, we will help you understand what SOC2 is, its importance and compliance requirements for your business to build trust with auditors and clients.
What is SOC 2 Compliance?
Service Organization Control 2 (SOC2) is a set of compliance requirements and auditing processes for third-party service providers. It was developed to help companies understand whether their vendors and business partners can manage their data and protect their client’s interests and privacy.
The compliance was introduced by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). SOC 2 helps in defining criteria to manage customer data based on five trust service principles:
· Security
· Availability
· Processing Integrity
· Confidentiality
· Privacy
Refer to the following image for a better understanding:
SOC 2 Certification
SOC 2 certification is provided by outside auditors. They evaluate the level to which a vendor meets one or more of the five trust principles according to the systems and processes.
Following are the trust principles:
· Security: The security principle is for the protection of system resources against unauthorized access. Access controls help prevent potential system abuse, misuse of software, theft or unauthorized data removal, and improper modification or disclosure of data.
IT security tools like Two Factor Authentication, Web Application Firewalls, and Intrusion Detection help avoid security breaches that can lead to unauthorized data and systems access.
· Availability: The availability principle concerns the accessibility of the system, services, or products as specified by a contract or service level agreement. Both parties define the minimum performance level for system availability.
The principle doesn’t address the usability and functionality of a system. Still, it involves security-related criteria that can affect the availability of a system. Monitoring the performance and availability of the network, security incident handling, and site failover is vital in this context.
· Process Integrity: The process integrity principle helps address whether or not a system achieves its purpose. Therefore, data processing should be complete, accurate, valid, timely, and authorized.
However, process integrity doesn’t necessarily involve data integrity. If data holds errors before being input into the system, detecting them is not usually the responsibility of the processing entity. Data processing monitoring along with quality assurance procedures can ensure integrity processing.
- Confidentiality: Data is known to be confidential if its access and disclosure are limited to persons or organizations. Examples of such data can be intended only for company personnel, intellectual property, business plans, internal price listing, and other types of sensitive financial information of an organization.
Encryption is vital to protect the confidentiality of data during transmission. Application and network firewalls, combined with rigorous access controls, can be used for safeguarding information being stored or processed on computer systems.
- Privacy: The privacy principle helps address the system’s collection, disclosure, use, or disposal of personal information in conformity with the privacy notice of an organization and criteria defined in the generally accepted principle of AICPA. Some personal data regarding race, religion, sexuality, and health is also known to be sensitive and typically needs extra protection. An organization should provide the controls to protect all Personally identifiable information (PII) from unauthorized access.
Why Choose Mavericks Consulting?
The Mavericks Consulting offers advanced security solutions to help you with audit and compliance. We understand how SOC 2 certification can be helpful for your organization to win new business, and we are here to help you.
We perform regular audits to ensure the requirements of each of the five trusts are fulfilled and that your organization remains SOC 2 compliant. We help organizations to get SOC 2 audits and reports in a short period at a competitive cost. Feel free to connectwith us or fill out the online form to know more about our solutions.
