Criteria for SOC 2 compliance might seem confusing, but companies are reaping benefits from the process. Read this post for a breakdown of the process.
Join the DZone community and get the full member experience. To be reliable in today’s data-driven world, SOC 2 compliance is essential for all cloud-based businesses and technology services that collect and store their clients’ information. This gold standard of information security certifications helps to ensure your current data privacy levels and security infrastructure to prevent any kind of data breach. Data breaches are all too common nowadays among small to large scale companies across the globe in all sectors. According to PurpleSec, half of all data breaches will occur in the United States by 2023. Experiencing such a breach causes customers to completely lose trust in the targeted company and those who have been through one tend to move their business elsewhere to protect their personal information in the future. SOC 2 compliance can protect from all this pain by improving customer trust in a company with secured data privacy policies. Companies that adhere to the gold standard-level principles of SOC 2 compliance, can provide this audit as evidence of secure data privacy practices. We will break down the preparation process later in this article but let us first understand the basis of this certification. The American Institute of CPAs ( AICPA) officially developed SOC 2 certification to ensure customers’ data privacy by holding companies compliant to five trust principles. These principles are: A SOC 2 compliance report of certification determines whether a company is concerned about customer privacy after a detailed audit. Thus, the SOC 2 certification acts as proof of data privacy for customers concerned about sharing their personal information with a company. Moreover, these audits help to minimize threats, reassure clients, strengthen brand reputation and give you a competitive edge in the market. Among all these compliance reports, SOC 1 is entirely different, as it governs with financial reporting. SOC 2 and SOC 3 are similar to some extent, but the audiences for these reports are different. SOC 2 is a more detailed audit report created for those who possess some technical knowledge to understand all the terminologies used in the report. SOC 3 reports, on the other hand, are geared towards a general audience with little or no technical expertise. Therefore, unlike SOC 2, this audit is fairly short, and it only gives an overview of data privacy and the company’s policies to concerned people. There are two types of compliance reports for this standard, and both differ slightly from each other: The SOC 2 compliance criteria varies from company to company.
