How To Conduct A SOC 2 Self-Assessment?

Getting SOC 2 compliance is fast becoming critical, even for early-stage startups, to prevent potential loss of business. It’s now a matter of when to get your SOC 2 more than why should you. Be that as it may, prepping for SOC 2 can be time-consuming. In that context, as you go through the rigmaroles of getting SOC 2 compliant, how and when do you know to pull a stop and go through your audit? How can you tell if you are audit ready without having to shell out an expensive fee to an external consultant? SOC 2 self-assessment is how you do it! 

Similar to SOC 2 readiness assessment but sans the cost of it! In a self-assessment, you go through the review process with the help of an internal team. Read on to learn more about SOC 2 assessment, and the why and how of it. Bonus: A downloadable SOC 2 Self-assessment checklist.

Why do you need to conduct SOC 2 self-assessment?

A SOC 2 assessment can help you comprehensively identify and asses your entire control environment before the formal SOC 2 audit. It will help surface deficiencies, gaps, and other problems that need immediate corrective action.

It’s a good idea to understand SOC 2 requirements and have a functional SOC 2 compliance checklist before undertaking SOC 2 self-assessment.

What you need to conduct SOC 2 self-assessment

Before we move on to the steps in self-assessment, let’s quickly look at what are your absolute must-haves.

Start your self-assessment months before your SOC 2 audit

No matter which option you choose, remember that you must review your audit readiness months before your actual audit. Doing this would give you ample time to remediate, make edits, and plug control gaps.

Ensure the subject matter expertise of your internal resource

Your internal resource who will lead the self-assessment must have established expertise and authority in conducting it. Otherwise, the exercise may prove futile, and you would risk getting an unfavorable auditor opinion in your SOC 2 report.

Conduct a SOC 2 audit self-assessment in three steps

SOC 2 assessment helps you evaluate your controls, and find any gaps or deficiencies in your control environment. The compliance process is far from easy, but here’s a simple step-by-step guide to executing it.

Step 1: Review audit scope

The first step of a SOC 2 assessment is reviewing the audit scope: the portion of your organization that must be included in the audit – related to information systems, people, and locations. When you determine the specific systems that would be critically assessed, there is a high likelihood of your discovering that you must include more of your organization’s systems and controls in the scope. Better now than later though.

You don’t want to be surprised by ‘scope creeps’ during your SOC auditing process! At this stage, you must also verify if all the relevant Trust Principles (security, availability, confidentiality, processing integrity and privacy) have been chosen for your organization. 

Step 2: Evaluate control mapping

You can start by gathering and reviewing the evidence you’ve collected with respect to the documentation, policies and internal controls based on the chosen TSCs. Each chosen TSC has a subset of individual criteria and requirements. You must evaluate whether your controls are mapped to each individual criterion as well as the common criteria series.

A review of the SOC 2 risk assessments to review the identified risks and how they have been placated by implementing controls is a good starting point too.

You will also review the organization controls mapping spreadsheet, relevant procedure documents such as management assertion letter, system description, and policies, and the evidence of security compliance at this stage. Doing this will bring to the fore any missing or deficient controls and gaps that need fixing before your SOC 2 compliance audit.

Step 3: Implement remediation plan and test for more gaps

With an overview of the missing links, security control designs and oversights, you must now make recommendations for plugging the gaps and bolstering the controls matrix of your organization to meet the compliance requirements. 

You must also document the remediation plan with details of the gaps, the corrective actions, the person responsible for implementing the remediation, and the time taken to complete it. Some of the corrective actions to your security program can include access controls, incident response in case of a data breach, to name a few.

You must also communicate the results and the corrective actions of the self-assessment process with all the stakeholders in the organization. It is important for all stakeholders to have an understanding and overview of the organization’s network security posture. 

Also read: A Guide on SOC 2 Compliance

SOC 2 readiness assessment vs SOC 2 self-assessment: What’s the difference?

SOC 2 readiness assessment and SOC 2 self-assessment are essentially the same; they review your organization’s audit preparedness and help you remediate the gaps, wherever applicable. In short, they prep you up for your Systems and Organizational Controls 2 audit, where the auditor reviews if you store your data securely.

But there are some significant differences that you should know before deciding which way to take. 

Type of assessment

A readiness assessment makes for a formal approach to measuring audit readiness as it requires an AICPA-credentialed external auditor to come on board. Self-assessment, in comparison, isn’t as formal. An internal resource(s) is entrusted the job here.

Owners

As we mentioned earlier, a readiness assessment is carried out by an external auditor you hire for the job. The external auditor will review your audit scope & controls mapping, among other things and share a detailed remediation plan with your management.

Self-assessment is carried out by an internal resource with relevant expertise. It also involves mapping of your existing information security controls to your selected Trust Services Criteria (TSCs or Trust Service Principles), identifying gaps, and creating a remediation plan ahead of your SOC 2 audit.

Cost

A readiness assessment can set you back by about $10000-$15000. Self-assessment, on the other hand, comes at no cost; except the cost of lost productivity and time of your internal resource(s). 

Challenges

Your choice of assessment, therefore, would boil down to the question of resource allocation. Are you ready to expend $10k-$15k, or would you rather allocate internal resources that come bundled with productivity costs alone? The challenge would be to have the right internal SOC 2 expert to spearhead the self-assessment process.

If you are in a supply chain business then click here.

SOC 2 self-assessment checklist

SOC 2 assessment is more time-consuming than tough. It’s a good idea to approach it in a planned and phased manner. Here’s a handy checklist to ensure you haven’t missed anything critical to help your organization prepare for an audit.

Get audit-ready faster with Sprinto

Sprinto offers you the best of both worlds. You get the expertise of having an infosec consultant on board without the prohibitive cost of hiring one. You also get to include your internal resource(s) in the compliance and auditing process without affecting their productivity. Achieving SOC compliance is easy, fast and effortless with Sprinto, no matter the type of SOC 2 report you need.

Sprinto’s compliance automation platform gives you a dashboard view of your audit readiness as well as a granular view of the tests that are failing, pending and critical. Evidence collection, controls mopping, risk assessment, and policy creation and acknowledgement can be implemented easily and without errors.

What’s more, the SOC 2 self-assessment feature is built into the application, and is, therefore, made available to you at no additional cost. Your SOC 2 security certifications, therefore, aren’t as steep when you work with Sprinto.

If security and compliance are two sides of the same coin, continuous monitoring is the glue that holds them together. Sprinto does the examination of controls, not just over a period of time, but continuously so that you meet the attestation standards always.  With Sprinto, the continuous monitoring feature is an added perk. 

Book a demo with Sprinto today to see how you can breeze through your compliance journey with an intelligent compliance automation platform.