SOC 2 Audit Checklist Excel

An SOC 2 audit is an intensive review of your security measures and practices, assessing them against five Trust Services Criteria (TSCs): Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy.

Planning and preparation are essential when it comes to achieving SOC 2 compliance, with four main steps involved in this process: scoping, conducting a readiness assessment, closing gaps and maintaining compliance.

Pre-Assessment
Befor engaging a third-party auditor to assess your compliance, it’s vitally important that all operational documents be in order. This includes lists of current employees, organizational charts, change trackers and security incident reports – this ensures the audit will proceed more accurately and quickly.

An effective approach to becoming SOC 2 compliant also requires having a clear sense of your goal, which will enable you to stay on task and motivate your team throughout the process. Furthermore, designating process owners helps document all processes correctly.

Conducting a readiness assessment is an effective way of identifying any weak spots or areas for improvement within your company. Although auditors cannot help fix any existing weaknesses, they can suggest improvements and provide recommendations for ongoing monitoring practices that will keep compliance consistent – this way avoiding costly SOC 2 audits in future and giving you more time and focus to provide reliable services to customers.

Preparing for the Audit
Preparing for an audit requires several steps, with selecting and working with an auditor you trust being of primary importance. A readiness assessment serves as a pre-audit examination that helps evaluate current security measures and processes while identifying any gaps and closing them – usually taking several months to complete if using manual methods; trustCloud compliance workflows and automation can make the process faster and simpler.

At scoping stage, you should select which categories from Trust Services Criteria (TSC) you would like included in your audit – typically Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality and Privacy are included here. Furthermore, you can choose whether a Type 1 or Type 2 report would best meet your needs; Type 1 reports typically offer assurances that controls are working as intended at one moment in time, while a Type 2 report shows how well they have performed over an extended period.

During the Audit
The Audit Phase involves a comprehensive examination of existing policies, controls and procedures by an outside service auditor. Their resulting report will offer an in-depth account of audited systems as well as their effectiveness; additionally it may offer opinions as to whether one or more trust service principles have been fulfilled by these systems.

Selecting which Trust Services Criteria to include will depend on your business needs. Choose between Availability for data accessibility to customers, Processing Integrity when carrying out critical customer processes or Confidentiality when protecting personal information protected by non-disclosure agreements and privacy laws.

This phase may take some time, especially if you choose to bring in an outside service auditor. Be sure to involve key members from across departments (human resources, engineering, DevOps and security etc) so they understand what will be evaluated as well as their responsibilities during this process.

Post-Audit
Once the auditor is done, you will be provided with either an unmodified opinion, a qualified opinion, or an adverse opinion based on their evaluation of your system and controls set up to protect customer data.

Selecting an SOC 2 compliance audit firm that understands your industry is crucial to its success. Select an auditing firm which understands your business and has experience dealing with other companies operating within it as well as can meet all of your individual compliance needs.

Before beginning the SOC 2 audit process, it’s advisable to conduct a gap assessment or readiness evaluation. This can help identify what controls are currently in place as well as any that need implementing, saving both time and money while making sure you’re prepared for an SOC 2 audit. Also remember to decide between Type 1 or Type 2 audits!