While it might seem challenging to remain SOC 2 compliant, it is a critical process that helps earn your client’s trust and also ensures the security of your systems.

SOC 2 assesses how well a company protects its data based on five trust service criteria: protection, accessibility, processing completeness, confidentiality, and individual privacy.

In this article, we’ll examine the details of SOC 2 compliance and I’ll provide a complete guide to help your organization achieve and maintain this critical certification. We’ll also discuss the five trust services criteria and essential steps for implementation, and I’ll offer insights on preparing for and passing SOC 2 audits.

Table of Contents

• What is SOC 2 Compliance?
• Learn About SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria
• Implement Strong Access Controls
• Continuously Monitor Your Systems
• Document Everything
• Prepare for Regular Audits
• Ensure Vendor Compliance
• Incident Response Plan
• Employee Training and Awareness
• SOC 1 vs SOC 2
• Conclusion

What is SOC 2 Compliance?

SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls) represents an organization's framework for addressing the privacy, security, and reliability of customer data in cloud services.

Developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), SOC 2 focuses on five key trust service principles: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. SOC 2 compliance, therefore, means that a company has taken appropriate measures to handle clients’ and partners’ sensitive data and gain their trust.

To stay compliant with the SOC 2 requirements, a company must perform several activities, including audits, system monitoring, and following various best practices and guidelines for data security.

Now we’ll discuss some of these best practices and how you and your team can implement them.

1. Learn About SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria

Let me highlight that the first fundamental rule to maintaining compliance is a thorough understanding of the SOC 2 trust service criteria. These are the five key areas that auditors will assess for SOC 2 certification:

1. Security: Non-intrusive measures of safeguarding the systems from unauthorized access.

2. Availability: Make sure systems are deliverable as they have been contracted in service-level agreements.

3. Processing Integrity: System processing must be complete, accurate, and authorized. For example, input validation checks must be implemented to prevent invalid data from entering the system, and automated workflows must be used to ensure that data is processed consistently and accurately.

4. Confidentiality: Electronic security covers aspects like how to protect sensitive information.

5. Privacy: This covers handling one's data according to the guidelines of existing privacy policies. It focuses on implementing data privacy policies, procedures, and controls to protect individuals' data. For example, organizations should obtain explicit consent from individuals before collecting and using their personal information and provide them with the right to access, correct, or delete their data.

Investing time in creating a relationship between your organization’s policies and procedures and these criteria is crucial. Make sure you and your team do this with your current security plans and policies, and ensure that they regularly comply with the above mentioned standards.

2. Implement Strong Access Controls

Poor access control measures are one of the most sure-fire ways to fail to achieve SOC 2 compliance. You’ll need to make sure that users only have access to the necessary information they need in order to work, giving them the fewest possible privileges.

You can achieve this by:

• Implementing multi-factor authentication that must be passed before a user gets access to the organization’s network.

• Setting up role-based access control (RBAC).

• Reviewing user activity logs to identify and address any suspicious or unauthorized behavior. This helps detect potential security threats and ensure that access controls are followed.

3. Continuously Monitor Your Systems

SOC 2 is not just a one-time thorough audit – it always follows a set of guidelines. While SOC 2 audits take place annually, you can choose to conduct them more frequently, and also keep in mind the importance of regularly reviewing your security policies. You can also set up periodic internal audits as a litmus test of your safety measures.

But that means you must employ a procedure to monitor the systems regularly in the future. You can set up notifications on any abnormal incidences by using a security information and event management (SIEM) system to centralize and analyze security events, system outages, or slow network for adverse effects to the compliance level.

In addition to automated monitoring, you should schedule internal compliance audits from time to time to monitor your company’s compliance.

“We recommend organizations employ tools like vulnerability scanners, web application firewalls and penetration testing tools for scanning the organizational infrastructure for possible vulnerabilities,” says Jinson, a senior security researcher at Astra Security. These tools assist you in identifying risks beforehand, enabling you to mitigate them before they become major.

4. Document Everything

Documentation is one of the main pillars at the core of SOC 2 compliance. A comprehensive set of documents, including processes, security policies, and incident response plans, is essential for demonstrating compliance and providing auditors with the evidence they need.

By maintaining comprehensive documentation, you can ensure compliance with SOC 2 standards and reduce the risk of security breaches.

To keep this manageable:

• Develop a compliance documentation collection center for more efficient retrieval of documents.

• Make the documentation as flexible to update as you can, and make it as convenient as possible to share with the right people.

• Effectively, document changes made to the system, who requests access to what part of the system, and any security threats.

5. Prepare for Regular Audits

A SOC 2 audit cannot be undertaken using a ‘set it and forget it’ approach. While the initial setup may not paint a pretty picture, you must be ready to remain compliant for annual or regular assessments.

The audit involves interviewing staff members, reviewing your company’s security policies, and thoroughly analyzing how your business complies with SOC 2 requirements through relevant pentesting tools such as DAST tools, which help identify vulnerabilities in real-time within your applications.

• Maintain at least one person or a group conversing with the SOC 2 specifications.

• Make sure that all the employees are aware of their responsibilities in helping to keep the business compliant.

• Pre-audit checks are a good idea. You conduct an initial check of your organization’s policies which gives you the chance to rectify any problems well before the audit.

6. Ensure Vendor Compliance

Second-party vendors, which your company may engage for various goods or services, are also expected to comply with SOC 2 standards. If you interact with cloud providers, data processors, or any other service that processes your sensitive data, you must ensure they are SOC 2 compliant.

You should require that your vendors share their compliance reports with you, or you can perform assessments of all vendors. This helps ensure that they follow their security measures and do not compromise the ones you hold as paramount.

7. Have an Incident Response Plan

However much you bake security into your daily practices and policies, accidents happen sometimes. That’s why it’s imperative to have a concise and clear incident response plan to help maintain SOC 2 compliance.

Security Incident: Methods and Practices for Protection

• When an incident occurs, you’ll need to determine which people are responsible for managing the incident.

• Make sure you have the steps in place for internal reporting and communicating of breaches, as well as external reporting and communicating of breaches.

• Remember, you should conduct frequent tests of the incident response plan and revise it according to the experiences of incidents or audits.

• Select the best ransomware protection solution, such as Malwarebytes, or Bitdefender, which prevent ransomware infections and recover encrypted files, or NAKIVO ransomware protection, which I personally use to protect data backups, as this will significantly reduce the risk of data breaches caused by malware or ransomware attacks.

8. Employee Training and Awareness

It was seen that no matter how sophisticated your security measures are, they can only be as good as those who operate them. Make data protection procedures a part of the employees' training, including how to report an incident and company regulations. Remind them about phishing scams, passwords, their strength, and other corporate safety policies.

SOC 2 compliance is a conventional course in an organization, and everyone has a part to play. While it assists in general compliance during day-to-day business, it also plays a critical role in ensuring a seamless audit process.

SOC 1 vs SOC 2

While both SOC 1 and SOC 2 are frameworks for assessing organizational controls, they focus on different aspects of an organization's operations. SOC 1 primarily focuses on the reliability of financial reporting, assessing an organization's internal controls related to financial information.

SOC 2, on the other hand, is broader in scope. It evaluates an organization's control over security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. This is particularly important for organizations that handle sensitive customer data.

Conclusion

In today’s data-driven world, earning and maintaining SOC 2 compliance is not just a box to tick but a strategic investment in your security and reputation.

Understanding the trust service criteria, controlling access, monitoring systems, and preparing for an audit are critical steps to ensuring your organization passes the SOC 2 check and is protected against data breaches.

This way, the client is protected from inside threats, and the organization actively aligns itself with security compliance.