As they’re now two of the most popular compliance initiatives in the world, many organizations often choose to pursue either SOC 2 or ISO 27001, and others are tackling both. In fact, there are strategic benefits to be gained in undergoing both a SOC 2 examination and achieving ISO 27001 certification, especially as you can do both at the same time.

Ugh, it’s happened—during your SOC examination, your service auditor identified a deviation from your intended process, and that resulted in a testing exception. Given that your customers (and other stakeholders) are relying on your SOC report for reassurance regarding the effectiveness of your controls, you need to address that deviation—but how?

As the need for SOC 2 examinations continues to grow domestically as well as internationally, many organizations now either find themselves taking on more and more assessments or trying to appease a client base that requires a SOC 2 examination when the typical product or platform approach may not apply. When these situations crop up, we are seeing more adoption of what’s known as an enterprise services SOC 2 examination.

These days, blockchain providers find themselves in an interesting position—you have a revolutionary service to offer, but the market is still coming around to it. You need a way to validate your product so they will. Luckily, there is something you can do—you can take the initiative to acquire a SOC report.

When pursuing a SOC 2 examination, a popular first step for many organizations—particularly those just stepping into the world of compliance for the first time—is the SOC 2 readiness assessment. But for those first-timers who don’t know what to expect from such a process, it might help to have a primer.

Internal Audit (IA) and Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) professionals are often charged with reading SOC reports from service providers to gain an understanding of each vendor’s controls, but many may not know how you can also use these reports to also enhance, mature, and drive their own audit and governance functions.

Though the timeline of a completed report varies greatly based on numerous factors within your organization, a SOC 1 examination generally always moves through the same three phases of planning and preparation, fieldwork, and reporting stages.

Now that artificial intelligence (AI) has more fully engrained itself into the digital world and economy, it makes sense that the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)—as the organization that sets the most recognized auditing standards in the U.S.—would have an opinion on AI use, particularly in terms of the possibility of related SOC-compliance issues.