SOC 2 compliance audits can take up to a year to complete — a checklist will help keep your business on track
SOC 2 compliance is an essential step for organizations launching consumer-facing products. The rigorous steps in conducting an audit ensure that your organization has achieved a high level of security in its tech stack and corporate policies. However, many organizations are unsure if they comply with SOC 2 standards, especially after recent updates have changed the requirements for achieving compliance.
Failure to comply can result in loss of business opportunities, increased risk of data breaches, and reputational damage resulting from a lack of security. That’s why we put together a SOC 2 compliance checklist to help start-ups and businesses new to the process through their first audit. Read on to learn why you should use a checklist to track your SOC 2 compliance progress and download our checklist today to get started.
What Is SOC 2 Compliance?
SOC 2 is a set of compliance standards developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to help businesses keep customer data private and secure.
U.S. law does not require adherence to SOC 2 standards to do business, and maintaining compliance is not a complete guarantee against data breaches or intrusions. However, achieving compliance ensures that your organization uses widely-recognized processes to achieve data security. It can also be used as a shorthand when advertising your business to potential customers or clients — SOC 2 compliance shows everyone that your business takes security seriously.
Achieving compliance requires adherence to one, several, or all of the following Trust Services Criteria (TSC):
- Security: Required to achieve SOC 2 compliance, these standards dictate how businesses store and protect systems against unauthorized access.
- Availability: This criterion determines how readily accessible systems are to users by minimizing downtime.
- Processing Integrity: These processes ensure that the data users see when accessing a system is reliable and accurate.
- Confidentiality: This criterion governs how sensitive information is stored and accessed.
- Privacy: Users need to feel confident that their personal information isn’t visible to anyone but themselves and other authorized users.
Why You Need a SOC 2 Compliance Checklist
To prove that your organization meets the requirements for SOC 2 compliance, it will need to undergo a lengthy examination process that can take up to a year to complete. This process is a costly endeavor, so having a checklist on hand will keep your organization on task and will help reduce unnecessary spending in the leadup to the audit. A checklist will also minimize the chances you will need to undergo expensive reexaminations that stem from a failed audit.
There are several preliminary steps your organization should take before it even undergoes an audit to maximize its chances of success. These include:
- Determining which type of SOC 2 report you’re requesting: There are two types of SOC report, and the one you pick will determine the time you need to set aside and the level of scrutiny involved in the audit.
- Pick the TSCs you will meet: Security is the only required criterion to achieve compliance, so you must examine your business and its processes to determine which of the other TSCs you plan to achieve.
- Perform a readiness assessment: Determine your organization’s security posture before addressing deficiencies.
- And more.
Completing these steps will help your SOC 2 audit go as smoothly as possible, minimizing the potential for failure and setting your business up to remediate any issues quickly. Download our SOC 2 compliance checklist today and start your journey to a successful audit off on the right foot.
DuploCloud Can Help You Achieve Compliance
SOC 2 audits can take months out of your busy schedule to complete — we can help you be audit-ready in weeks. DuploCloud enables developers to build and deploy cloud-native applications while mapping security and compliance controls to SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and more specifications. Plus, DuploCloud provides 24/7 monitoring and in-depth reporting to ensure you always maintain compliance. Contact us today to learn how DuploCloud can help you achieve your compliance goals.
