SOC 2 Compliance can be Maintained Through 11 Practices

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SOC 2 compliance is the successful end result of verification done by AICPA certified auditors that assure users about the cloud or SaaS provider that their services are safe to use. SOC 2 compliance is not something that organizations are required to have, but it can be promoted as a privacy and safety add-on for the services the organization provides. 

Practices to Be Maintained

For an organization to get or maintain SOC 2 compliance standards, several operational and technical procedures need to be practiced. As SOC 2 compliance depends on five trust criteria (security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy), we will discuss best practices for each of them as a whole. 

  1. Raising Organizational Awareness

The first and foremost requirement for any organization to be SOC compliant is to have the employees know about their duty towards the personal data of the users. 

A training program, relying on the security policies designed by your HR department, should be developed to make your employees understand how not to fall prey to phishing, physical threats, and social engineering attacks. In addition to it, the training program should also educate employees on how to transact emails, and share data securely with others. 

Not every organization needs to follow the highest protocols to safeguard their client’s interests.   Your awareness program should be designed on the basis of your requirement. 

  1. Access Protection

Not everyone in your department needs to have access to every piece of data. Access protection policies and settings for files, directories, and processes ensure that user data isn’t mishandled. 

Enforce access protection settings across your organization and refrain anyone from having admin access if possible. Even yourself. This might seem counterproductive, but in case of a breach, a system having more access means more penetration. 

If enabling organization-wide access protection isn’t possible, you should consider session tokens that expire after a certain period. Depending on the project status, you can grant or deny access to the employees after the said period is over. 

  1. Data Protection

Data collection, retention, and disposal hold a lot of weightage in SOC 2 requirements. The SOC 2 manual states that the data collected from the users must be consensual, secure, and should be limited to the requirements of the organization. 

If any data collected from the users is stolen or leaked during retention and disposal, the SOC 2 security controls, privacy, and processing integrity criteria are faltered. Thus, boosting cybersecurity measures around databases is an absolute necessity if data collection is being practiced by your organization.  

  1. Building Cybersecurity Policy

A cybersecurity policy ensures that the employees and executives of your organization follow the standard regulations around cybersecurity. Cybersecurity policy revolves around email encryption, social media restrictions, and procedures following a data breach.

Your cybersecurity team is responsible for finding web and software vulnerabilities and patching them up. Cybersecurity policies also set standards for the cybersecurity team. Having a standard protocol around cybersecurity can save you a lot of money in addition to gaining you a SOC 2 compliance certificate.  

  1. Using Auto Scaling

Auto scaling is a cloud computing tool offered by prominent cloud service providers to enable automatic traffic diversion in case of unpredictable demand spikes. The whole point of autoscaling is ditching the need for manual intervention and increasing the availability of servers for your users to have access. 

SOC 2 compliance requirements require that your necessary services are made available whenever the user needs them. But in case a DDoS attack or demand spike takes place, autoscaling can be a great alternative. 

  1. Employing Multiple Servers

To ensure availability in a demand spike, you can employ additional job servers. By having multiple servers providing support to your application server for a large user population, you ensure that the availability of the system isn’t hampered. 

It’s generally a good practice for large organizations to have a master server assign jobs to other additional servers. But as SOC 2 compliance requires availability, comparatively smaller organizations also benefit from this arrangement. 

  1. Network Monitoring

To sustain a secure network, monitor every component such as routers, switches, servers, and firewalls. Automated network monitoring tools that keep an eye on every element of a network can be used for the purpose. 

The first step in network monitoring is marking the essentials that need to be scanned frequently. Network components like printers and desktops don’t require as much close and frequent monitoring as servers and firewalls do. 

The second part is setting an optimum time interval. If you keep scanning the whole network for vulnerabilities continuously, you’d end up losing a lot of system and monetary resources. Set a time interval between scans to give your cybersecurity team time to patch the issues and keep your organization SOC compliant. 

  1. Secure Document Sharing

Use a VPN server or end-to-end encryption protocol to ensure that the documents containing user data aren’t stolen. Encrypted channels are enveloped in such a way that even if a breach befalls your organization, the attacker isn’t handed over the documents in their original form. 

Effective secure document sharing practices include: 

  • Training protocols that enforce training about transacting sensitive documents through social media, private chats, group chats
  • Encrypting email attachments before being sent to the recipient
  • Keeping an eye on the inbound and outbound files constantly
  • Using SSL, HTTPS certificates on your websites
  • Fixing known vulnerabilities of your system
  1. Installing Firewalls

The firewall on your network works as a tool that filters the incoming traffic for malicious connections and forwards only the legitimate authorized connections. Attackers make efforts to breach the private network that your employees are using to transact and process data. Firewalls ensure that only authorized devices can tap into the data pool. 

Generally, firewalls make use of predefined policies that dictate to block or pass a particular device. 

  1. Develop Password Policies

Encourage your employees to use strong passwords on their work devices, personal devices, and social media. It may seem invasive, but social engineering and impersonation techniques can be used to lure other employees into phishing attacks if the attackers crack someone’s social media password. 

  1. Refrain Using Public Wi-Fi

Public Wi-Fi in clubs, airports, and cafes can be used by anyone and doesn’t establish a secure connection between the router and each device. If someone with bad intent connects through the same network as you, they can hijack your session and log in to encrypted sites using your credentials. 

In many cases, the attackers set their own WI-Fi hotspot with a close enough name to confuse the victims. Once they’ve connected, the attacker can access their files through the connection. Employee training is absolutely necessary for conditioning them for this kind of vulnerability.  

The Bottom Line

If you’ve considered SOC 2 compliance requirements, you must maintain these 11 practices to ensure the five trust criteria are defended. 

Raising overall awareness, using strong passwords, and refraining from using public Wi-Fi are considered the first steps towards SOC 2 compliance. Followed by building a robust cybersecurity policy, using auto-scaling, and employing load balancing to safeguard your servers from direct attacks. 

Finally, you need to implement access protection, firewalls, and data protection measures to secure your network from unauthorized access.  

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