Navigating the SOC 2 Certification Scope: What's In and What's Out

1. Navigating the SOC 2 Certification Scope: What's In and What's Out

2. Navigating the SOC 2 Certification Scope: What's In and What's Out Navigating the scope of SOC 2 (Service Organization Control 2) certification is crucial to ensure that the right areas of your organization's systems, processes, and controls are included while understanding what is excluded from the certification. SOC 2 focuses on the trust, security, availability, processing integrity, and confidentiality of information within a service organization. Here's a breakdown of what's typically included and excluded in the SOC 2 certification scope: What's typically included in the SOC 2 certification scope: Trust Services Criteria (TSC):SOC 2 certification assesses an organization's compliance with the Trust Services Criteria, which include five categories: a. Security: The protection of information and systems against unauthorized access, unauthorized disclosure, and damage. b. Availability: The availability of systems and services as agreed upon or contractually defined. c. Processing Integrity: The completeness, accuracy, timeliness, and validity of processing. d. Confidentiality: The protection of confidential information from unauthorized access or disclosure. e. Privacy: The collection, use, retention, disclosure, and disposal of personal information in accordance with applicable privacy principles and regulations. Control Environment: The control environment includes the governance, policies, procedures, and processes established to manage and monitor the organization's systems and operations. This encompasses management's commitment to security and privacy, risk assessment processes, employee training programs, and incident response capabilities.

3. Information Systems: SOC 2 evaluates the security and integrity of the organization's information systems, including network infrastructure, hardware, software, databases, and applications. This involves assessing controls related to access controls, user management, change management, vulnerability management, and system monitoring. Data Privacy: If the organization handles personal information, the SOC 2 scope may include controls related to data privacy, including data collection, processing, storage, access, and disclosure. This aspect aligns with the privacy principles of the applicable privacy regulations (e.g., GDPR, CCPA). What's typically excluded from the SOC 2 certification scope: Financial Controls: SOC 2 is not designed to assess financial reporting controls, as that falls under the purview of SOC 1 (formerly SAS 70) audits. Other Regulatory Compliance: While SOC 2 may touch on certain aspects of privacy regulations, it does not provide a comprehensive assessment of an organization's compliance with specific regulatory frameworks like HIPAA (for healthcare data) or PCI DSS (for payment card data). Organizations may need to pursue separate certifications or audits for specific regulatory compliance requirements. Non-IT Business Processes: SOC 2 primarily focuses on IT systems and processes. Non-IT business processes such as supply chain management, manufacturing, or physical security may not be within the scope of the certification. However, there could be interactions and dependencies with IT systems that are considered. It's important to work with a qualified auditor or certification body to define the specific scope of your SOC 2 certification. They will help determine the areas of your organization that need to be assessed and ensure that the scope aligns with your business objectives, industry requirements, and customer expectations.