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If you’re considering a SOC 2 audit, be it due to a customer request or to strengthen your security posture, you may already understand that this examination will include an evaluation of your product or service on a more operational and security-oriented level. You may even already grasp that during a SOC 2, your scope will be evaluated against a set of trust services criteria (TSC) that provide the backbone of the assessment. But what are the trust services categories, the criteria that make up each category, and which ones will you actually need for your SOC 2 audit? At Schellman, we have over two decades of experience in SOC 2 examinations, and we want to help you navigate what can be a complex process. Read on to discover what inclusion of each category will mean for your SOC 2 examination. From there, we’ll give you some guidelines for your internal conversations when making your choice. Afterwards, you’ll be that much closer to pinning down what you need from your upcoming SOC 2 report.

Have you read the recently released America’s AI Action Plan yet? If so, you know that it’s full of ambitious goals to strengthen the country’s leadership in artificial intelligence. For me, one part in particular stood out immediately, the White House issued a clear call to action to the data center industry.

Organizations complete mergers and acquisitions (M&A) all the time, be it for growth and expansion, to further synergize or diversify, or for other incentives. And as varied as your reason(s) may be for your latest realignment, there is one consistent impact M&A has no matter the driver—the effect on your ongoing compliance cycles. As such, you need to have a plan to properly adjust, especially since there are different paths you can take when accommodating such an organizational shift.

In today’s complex and constantly evolving regulatory environment, businesses face an ever-growing array of compliance requirements across multiple frameworks ranging from FedRAMP, PCI, ISO, GDPR, and HIPAA, to name a few. Navigating these compliance waters is increasingly challenging, particularly with regards to cybersecurity and data protection. However, there are measures you can take to significantly refine your compliance processes. In this article, we will explore how streamlining all of your compliance efforts with a single trusted provider can not only simplify your processes but also enhance your overall security posture.

As cloud services continue to expand globally, service providers are increasingly expected to demonstrate compliance with a variety of frameworks depending on where their customers operate. Two commonly requested assurance reports include the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) SOC 2 attestation report and the German Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesmat fur Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik, or “BSI”) Cloud Computing Compliance Criteria Catalogue (C5) attestation report.

If your organization is looking for a way to showcase your commitment to security and compliance to the general public, a SOC 3 report might be the perfect solution. SOC 3 reports offer a high-level summary of your system and controls, tailored for sharing with a broad audience.

Opting for a readiness assessment ahead of your SOC 2 examination is—while optional—a beneficial extra step when seeking compliance. Do you remember taking a practice test while preparing for an exam in school? Such a move could never hurt your chances of success. That being said, there are some things you should understand ahead of your readiness assessment that can help demystify your experience.

When committing to a SOC 2 examination—or any compliance initiative—one of the first questions that gets asked regards the necessary budget and time commitments. While this will vary among different organizations—depending on a few different factors—there’s also variance in the effort required to both prepare for that first examination and that spent on the ones in the following years.