Key Takeaways
- Continuous Compliance Monitoring: Automated tools streamline ongoing efforts by facilitating continuous evidence collection and control monitoring, providing real-time insights into system improvements.
Not a Replacement for Attestation: While helpful for documentation, compliance software cannot issue a formal SOC 2® report. A third-party assessor is still required to analyze your unique security environment and provide a formal opinion.
Enhance Assessment Efficiency: By partnering with your third-party assessor early and leveraging automated data, you can validate your collected evidence and streamline the reporting engagement, avoiding potential delays and increasing overall efficiency.
The Evolving Compliance Landscape
The compliance landscape has evolved greatly in recent years with the advent of automated compliance monitoring tools and software. These tools can be a valuable way to document and support your organization’s compliance initiatives, but did you know that an assessment firm will still be required to issue your SOC 2®* report?
Let’s break down the ways that compliance software may help your business and get a better understanding of the potential capabilities a new compliance tool may offer.
Compliance Software Can Help Monitor Compliance or Meet Control Objectives
Automated evidence collection is one benefit of compliance tools. They allow your organization to document your compliance efforts and easily understand where your systems may need improvement.
This can offer you a picture of where your compliance efforts may need to be bolstered or reconsidered. While great for monitoring and understanding your compliance efforts, this is separate from a formal SOC* report.
Speak to a Compliance Specialist.
Compliance Software Can Not Provide a SOC* Report
Compliance software can feel like a quick win for organizations undergoing a compliance assessment for the first time, but there are some limitations that you should be aware of.
SOC 2®* compliance software will not be able to:
- Determine the necessary security requirements of your business or industry.
- Analyze the complexity of your unique security environment.
- Examine vulnerabilities within your systems or controls.
- Provide customized risk analysis information.
- Identify in-scope components.
- Adjust according to your specific security controls.
- Assess your market offering or industry.
- Scale as your organization matures.
A compliance tool won’t be able to issue a formal SOC 2®* report, but it will help you gain valuable information about the state of your system and the success of ongoing compliance efforts.
Why Do I Need a Third-Party Assessor for Compliance Reporting?
Partnering with your assessor from the beginning of the compliance process can help streamline your reporting engagement and allows your assessor to ensure all proper responsibilities have been met. Why is this important?
- Your auditor will need to review policies and procedures to ensure that they are tailored to your organizational needs.
- Your controls will need to be double-checked to ensure that risks have been properly addressed.
- Management will need to be able to take responsibility for the data collected by the tool and be able to demonstrate controls while under audit.
- The data collected by your compliance tool of choice will have to be reviewed for completeness.
Taking extra time to complete these extra steps could result in an increase in cost or unwanted delays in your reporting. Partnering with your chosen independent assessor early in the compliance process can help ease some of these reporting burdens by ensuring that all partners and expectations are aligned.
Auditwerx Partners With Your Existing Tools
We recognize that the changing compliance landscape requires new and innovative solutions to streamline compliance reporting, which is why our team is focused on working with you in accordance with your business needs. Contact Auditwerx today.
FAQs
What is the fundamental purpose of a SOC* attestation report?
A SOC report serves to formally assure current and future clients that your systems are reliable and your security controls are effective. It provides a formal, independent statement that your organization takes the protection of sensitive data and system integrity seriously.
When does an organization need to pursue SOC* compliance reporting?
You generally need SOC compliance reporting when your services could impact a client’s internal controls over financial reporting (SOC 1®) or when clients require assurance over your operational security, availability, and data protection (SOC 2®). It is often requested by partners in the cloud, technology, and financial industries.
What are the key distinctions between the SOC 1® and SOC 2® reporting frameworks?
The main difference is the scope of the assessment. SOC 1® is relevant to controls that affect a client’s financial statements, whereas SOC 2® is based on the Five Trust Services Criteria and analyzes your operational risk management outside of financial reporting.
What are the Five Trust Services Criteria evaluated in a SOC 2® assessment?
A SOC 2® assessment evaluates system controls based on five categories that clients rely on: Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy.
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