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You will be in business for years. Now for the very first time, you are being asked for your SOC 2 report by way of a current or potential customer. You are probably wondering what range of cost and effort is required, and if it is worth it. Don't worry, you are not alone. 

It's becoming increasingly common for organizations to request their vendors to undergo a Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 examination to make sure their sensitive information will be appropriately protected by your business how to get a SOC 2 report. Many now require a report included in their due diligence process before employing a company.

What's a SOC 2 Exam?
Manufactured by The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), a SOC 2 exam helps provide organizations ways to show the style and effectiveness of the internal controls. It's on the basis of the AICPA's trust services criteria of security required, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy. It pertains to almost all businesses collecting, storing, processing or sharing customer data.

To complicate matters, there are two kinds of SOC 2 exams: 

Type 1: Evaluates an organization's controls to find out if they're suitably designed and fairly stated at an individual point in time. 

Type 2: Evaluates the same controls as a Type 1, but additionally examines how well those controls performed over a time frame, typically 6-12 months. 

The Value It Brings
Besides the fact your visitors could be requiring you to provide a SOC 2 report in order to continue employing them, there are more benefits to presenting a test completed. 

Having a SOC 2 report readily available and ready to go gives you the edge over competitors who can't show compliance. It demonstrates your commitment to data security and will help ensure confidential information is protected. Your team will also be able to answer control-related questions from customers more efficiently. It's a fruitful solution to assess and ensure compliance with a wide selection of regulations and standards. Beyond that, it can help provide valuable insights into your organization's risk and security posture. 

Tips to Prepare 
Achieving compliance serves as a strong external way of measuring competency and credibility, enabling organizations to feel confident about making use of your services, but the process could be slightly stressful if you are not prepared. Listed below are five tips to make sure your readiness for a SOC 2 exam. 

Get a readiness assessment. A readiness assessment can help you determine your preparedness for a SOC 2 exam. You are able to either choose to do a readiness assessment all on your own, or you could engage an auditing firm to do your review. This kind of assessment provides insight into your organization's maturity level in its SOC 2 readiness journey and alerts one to any issues in advance. You can utilize auditors to greatly help develop controls which can be audited and described properly. 

Write one's body description. When you have not already, you should get one's body descriptions in order. First, determine which trust service criteria needs to be contained in your SOC 2 exam based on your own business. An breakdown of your systems'controls to meet up the SOC 2 control objectives should be compiled for the auditor. Depending on the complexity of your organization, this is actually a quick task or even a daunting one. Make sure you give yourself plenty of time to accomplish this thoroughly.
Almost all companies will typically engage their SOC auditor as a consultant to do a readiness assessment, that will include assistance in preparing the machine description. A key item to see is this document is dedicated to controls, not specific processes and does not want to offer away all of your operational secrets. 

Gather your documentation. Anticipate to produce documentation to your auditors when asked. You ought to have policies, procedures, organizational outlines and a listing of third-party vendors, among many other activities, on-hand and readily available. In a SOC 2 exam, each control needs to be auditable. When it is not documented, it can't be within the exam. 

Fix your issues. Take the time to deal with the control flaws and failures identified in the readiness assessment. It can be a great time to check whether your scope is appropriate.

Line-up the proper auditor. SOC 2 audits can only just be performed by certified public accounting (CPA) firms. But keep in mind, not all accountants are CPAs, which is why you cannot hire a regular accountant to conduct your SOC 2 audit. It should be one which specializes in information security, like those at Doeren Mayhew, and should be independent from your organization. The sooner you pick the proper partner, the smoother the overall process will go. 

In a world where organizations are leveraging technology significantly more than ever to provide their products and services, security integrity is of the most importance to your customers. Although it could seem daunting, a SOC 2 exam can provide significant benefits to your business's operations and bottom line.