Companies can get important services from outside sources without having to create a new department just for them by outsourcing to them. This is particularly true for small organizations, which might not have the means to handle some services internally. Outsourcing does, however, come with some dangers. Depending on the services a business chooses to outsource, it can be necessary to divulge private company or customer information to providers.
Organizations in this situation, especially those in highly regulated industries, should only work with vendors that can provide proof of SOC 3 compliance.
What is SOC 3?
Service Organization Control 3 (SOC 3) is an auditing procedure developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to demonstrate the strength of a service organization’s internal controls over cloud and data center security.
The five Trust Services Criteria (TSC), which the AICPA defines as follows, are the foundation of the SOC 3 framework.
Security — Information and systems are safeguarded against unauthorized access, disclosure of information, and system damage that could jeopardize the accessibility, integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of information or systems and impair the ability of the entity to achieve its goals.
Availability: Information and systems are accessible for use in order to achieve the goals of the entity.
Processing Integrity: The system’s processing is authorized, authorized, valid, complete, accurate, timely, and meets the goals of the entity.
Confidentiality: Information that has been marked as confidential is protected in order to achieve the goals of the entity.
Privacy – To achieve the goals of the entity, personal information is gathered, used, disclosed, and disposed of.
Who Does SOC 3 Apply to?
SOC 3 broadly applies to any service provider that stores customer data in the cloud, including SaaS, platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers.
Best Practices for SOC 3 Compliance
Service organizations are advised to: in order to pass a SOC 3 audit with flying colours.
Carefully select which controls they would like to have audited Select the controls you want to be audited very carefully. Data security is a basic requirement for all SOC 3 audits, however service firms can also opt to assess other internal controls in accordance with their preferred TSC. To maximize their chances of achieving SOC 3 compliance, service companies should be careful to make sure that their policies, procedures, and systems are up to current and completely safe before deciding which controls to audit and which TSC to employ.
Conduct a readiness assessment. A service business can prevent failing a SOC 3 audit by identifying any holes in its current controls with the use of a readiness assessment. With the findings of its preparedness report in hand, a service company can confidently undergo its SOC 3 audit and make the required adjustments to strengthen its security posture.
Figure out what “normal” looks like. A service company can more quickly spot unusual (and potentially malicious) activities by establishing a baseline for typical activity inside its cloud environment. After gathering this data, service organizations should use it to set up automatic anomaly alerts that include a method for removing erroneous signals.
Determine next steps for incident alerting. A service business should employ actionable forensics to determine everything from the attack’s root cause to the situation in which it occurred and meticulously record these specifics in addition to developing a security incident alerting mechanism. Making thorough audit trails can assist service businesses in finding potential security gaps, much as going through a readiness assessment.
Find a qualified service auditor to conduct the examination. Service organizations should look for prospective service auditors who are AICPA members, have expertise performing SOC audits (particularly with service companies of the same size or in the same industry), and have recently undergone peer review.
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