SOC 2 Compliance: Best Practices, Tips, and a Step-by-Step Checklist

SOC 2 Compliance Overview

SOC 2 compliance demonstrates that your organization protects customer data using a structured control framework. Built on the Trust Service Criteria, it validates both the design and, for Type II, the operating effectiveness of your controls across a defined period.

You succeed by treating SOC 2 as an ongoing security program, not a one-time project. Start with scope, perform a thorough risk assessment, formalize policies, implement technical safeguards, and establish Continuous Monitoring with strong Audit Evidence Collection.

Step-by-Step Checklist

1. Appoint an executive sponsor and name control owners; select an experienced audit firm.
2. Define the audit scope: systems, locations, data types, in-scope services, and third parties.
3. Map controls to the Trust Service Criteria; document control objectives and owners.
4. Perform a formal risk assessment and record risks, ratings, and treatment plans.
5. Publish and approve policies and procedures; train staff and capture acknowledgments.
6. Implement technical safeguards: Multi-Factor Authentication, Role-Based Access Controls, logging, encryption, and backups.
7. Establish Vendor Risk Management for all critical suppliers and subprocessors.
8. Stand up Continuous Monitoring for logs, alerts, vulnerabilities, and configuration drift.
9. Build an Incident Response Plan and Business Continuity/DR capabilities; test them.
10. Compile a readiness package and begin ongoing Audit Evidence Collection.
11. Remediate gaps, run an internal control walkthrough, and enter the SOC 2 audit.
12. After the report, maintain controls, monitor changes, and refresh risks regularly.

Best Practices and Tips

• Keep scope lean; include only systems that process or secure customer data.
• Automate evidence and control checks to reduce audit friction and human error.
• Assign one owner per control; define success metrics and escalation paths.
• Document early and often; screenshots, tickets, and system exports simplify audits.
• Run quarterly tabletop exercises for the Incident Response Plan and disaster recovery.
• Treat third parties like internal systems: assess, monitor, and contractually bind them.

Trust Service Criteria

The Trust Service Criteria define what your controls must achieve. Security (Common Criteria) is mandatory; the others apply based on your services and commitments to customers.

The Five Criteria

• Security: Protect systems and data against unauthorized access and changes. Examples: Role-Based Access Controls, Multi-Factor Authentication, network segmentation, vulnerability management, and centralized logging.
• Availability: Keep systems operational and meet uptime targets. Examples: capacity planning, resilient architectures, backups, disaster recovery, and health monitoring.
• Processing Integrity: Ensure processing is complete, valid, timely, and accurate. Examples: input validation, reconciliations, change control, and deployment gates.
• Confidentiality: Protect sensitive information against unauthorized disclosure. Examples: data classification, least privilege, encryption in transit/at rest, and secure key management.
• Privacy: Handle personal data according to commitments and privacy principles. Examples: consent management, data minimization, and deletion processes.

Selecting Applicable Criteria

Start with Security, then add Availability if you provide uptime commitments, Processing Integrity for data transformations, Confidentiality for sensitive datasets, and Privacy if you process personal information. Document the rationale for each selection.

Mapping Controls to Criteria

Create a control matrix that lists each control, its owner, frequency, evidence source, and mapped Trust Service Criteria. This matrix becomes the backbone for testing, Continuous Monitoring, and Audit Evidence Collection.

Defining Audit Scope

Clear scope prevents wasted effort and audit surprises. Identify which products, environments, and processes directly protect or process customer data, and exclude ancillary systems that do not affect the control objectives.

What to Include

• Systems and services: production applications, data stores, CI/CD, and security tooling.
• Data boundaries: types of customer data, where it flows, and where it is stored.
• Locations and environments: cloud regions, data centers, and production vs. non-prod.
• Identity providers and access paths: SSO, VPNs, bastion hosts, and admin consoles.
• Third parties: cloud platforms, payment processors, logging providers, and critical vendors.

Scoping Checklist

• Diagram data flows and trust boundaries; validate with engineering and security leads.
• Confirm asset inventory accuracy and tag in-scope components.
• Define included subprocessors and obtain their security attestations.
• Document assumptions and exclusions; get executive approval.

Type I vs. Type II

Type I attests that controls are suitably designed at a point in time—ideal for first-timers. Type II adds operating effectiveness over a period (often 3–12 months), providing stronger assurance and greater market credibility.

Risk Assessment Procedures

A structured risk assessment aligns controls to actual threats. It also informs priority, budget, and the scope of Continuous Monitoring.

Method and Frequency

• Establish context: business objectives, risk appetite, and regulatory obligations.
• Identify assets, threats, and vulnerabilities; form risk scenarios with clear owners.
• Score likelihood and impact; record inherent, residual, and target risk levels.
• Select treatments: mitigate, transfer, avoid, or accept; track deadlines and milestones.
• Review at least annually and upon material change (new product, vendor, or region).

Vendor and Supply Chain Risks

Integrate Vendor Risk Management into the assessment. Classify vendors by criticality, review their SOC reports or equivalent, evaluate security controls, and set monitoring cadences and exit strategies.

Evidence and Reporting

Maintain a risk register with timestamps, approvals, and supporting evidence. Save meeting notes, threat models, and vulnerability trending; this streamlines Audit Evidence Collection during the SOC 2 review.

Developing Policies and Procedures

Policies state “what” you require; standards define “how well”; procedures outline “how to do it.” All three must be approved, versioned, communicated, and reviewed at least annually.

Core Policy Set

• Access Control (with Role-Based Access Controls and least privilege)
• Information Security and Acceptable Use
• Change and Release Management
• Data Classification, Encryption, and Key Management
• Logging, Monitoring, and Continuous Monitoring
• Incident Response Plan and Communications
• Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery
• Vendor Risk Management and Third-Party Security
• Secure Software Development and Vulnerability Management
• Data Retention and Secure Disposal

Access Management Procedures

• Provisioning: grant access by role; require approvals tied to Role-Based Access Controls.
• Authentication: enforce Multi-Factor Authentication on SSO, VPN, admin tools, and code repos.
• Reviews: run periodic access recertifications, including privileged and service accounts.
• Deprovisioning: remove access immediately upon termination or role change.

Document Control and Training

Assign document owners, retain change history, and store policies in a central repository. Require employee acknowledgments and track completion as evidence for the audit.

Audit Evidence Collection

For each policy and procedure, pre-stage artifacts: approved documents, training logs, change tickets, screenshots, system exports, and sample records. Tag them to the mapped Trust Service Criteria to accelerate auditor requests.

Implementing Technical Security Controls

Technical safeguards operationalize your policies. Choose controls that directly reduce priority risks and produce reliable evidence.

Identity and Access Management

• Centralize SSO; mandate Multi-Factor Authentication for all privileged access.
• Implement Role-Based Access Controls with least privilege and separation of duties.
• Use just-in-time elevation, break-glass procedures, and periodic key rotation.
• Manage secrets securely; restrict and log API tokens and service credentials.

Data Protection

• Encrypt data in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest; manage keys securely with rotation policies.
• Define data retention; implement secure deletion for end-of-life records and backups.
• Back up critical data; test restores and document Recovery Time/Point Objectives.

Network, Host, and Platform Security

• Segment networks; apply least privilege security groups and firewall rules.
• Deploy EDR/EPP on endpoints and servers; monitor with a central console.
• Automate patching; run vulnerability scans and track remediation SLAs.
• Harden baselines for images, containers, and Kubernetes; verify drift continuously.

Application Security and Change Management

• Adopt a secure SDLC with threat modeling, code review, SAST/DAST, and dependency scanning.
• Gate deployments with approvals and checks; maintain traceable CI/CD logs.
• Log customer-impacting changes and link them to tickets for Audit Evidence Collection.

Monitoring, Logging, and Alerting

• Aggregate logs in a SIEM; alert on authentication anomalies, privilege changes, and data access.
• Define detection use cases mapped to Trust Service Criteria and test them regularly.
• Establish Continuous Monitoring dashboards and weekly control health reviews.
• Time-sync systems; retain logs for a defined period to support investigations.

Vendor Risk Management

• Inventory vendors, classify by risk, and collect security attestations and reports.
• Embed security obligations in contracts, including breach notification and right to audit.
• Monitor critical suppliers continuously and conduct annual reassessments.

Incident Response and Business Continuity Planning

Your Incident Response Plan should define roles, severity levels, communications, and technical playbooks for common scenarios such as credential compromise, data loss, or ransomware.

Incident Response Essentials

• Preparation: contacts, tooling access, runbooks, and evidence handling procedures.
• Detection and Analysis: triage alerts, validate indicators, and determine scope.
• Containment, Eradication, Recovery: isolate systems, remove artifacts, and restore safely.
• Post-Incident: root-cause analysis, lessons learned, and control improvements.
• Exercise the plan at least quarterly; record outcomes for Audit Evidence Collection.

Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery

• Perform a business impact analysis to set RTO/RPO targets and dependency maps.
• Design resilient architectures with failover, backups, and runbook-driven recovery.
• Test DR plans periodically; capture results, gaps, and remediation actions.
• Include third parties in continuity planning and verify their recovery capabilities.

Conclusion

SOC 2 compliance comes from disciplined scope, risk-driven controls, strong policies, and well-implemented technical safeguards. Anchor your program in Continuous Monitoring, rigorous Vendor Risk Management, and practiced incident and continuity plans, and keep evidence organized to streamline every audit cycle.

FAQs

What are the five Trust Service Criteria in SOC 2?

The five criteria are Security (mandatory), Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy. They define the objectives your controls must achieve, guiding design, operation, monitoring, and evidence production throughout your SOC 2 program.

How do you define the scope of a SOC 2 audit?

Identify the products and systems that process or secure customer data, map data flows and trust boundaries, include identity providers and access paths, and list critical third-party vendors. Document assumptions and exclusions, then validate scope with control owners before engaging the auditor.

What technical controls are essential for SOC 2 compliance?

Core controls include Multi-Factor Authentication, Role-Based Access Controls, centralized logging with alerting, encryption in transit and at rest, vulnerability and patch management, backups with tested restores, secure SDLC practices, and Continuous Monitoring tied to the Trust Service Criteria.

How often should SOC 2 risk assessments be conducted?

Perform a comprehensive risk assessment at least annually and whenever material changes occur, such as launching a new product, onboarding a critical vendor, or entering a new region. Update the risk register, treatment plans, and monitoring activities accordingly.