Let Us Guide You Through Your InfoSec & Compliance Journey.
Learn how to use the Compyl Platform.
Watch all Security Session Episodes
Real-world stories on how we help our customers.
Nearly every industry uses certifications and licenses to show that professionals are qualified for the task at hand. For example, no airline would hire a pilot that didn’t have the appropriate license or aircraft rating, and no company would trust an IT service provider that couldn’t prove they adhere to industry-standard data security protocols. For organizations that store or process client data, a SOC 2 report is the equivalent of compliance certification. To stay up-to-date, it’s important to know how long SOC 2 reports remain valid.
In general, SOC 2 reports are valid for 12 months. There’s technically no expiration date for SOC 2 certification, but industry best practices require businesses to schedule a new audit annually.
The idea is to show proof that your organization meets SOC 2 requirements currently, not several years ago. Not renewing your certification could cause potential customers to choose a competitor’s products instead.
In some circumstances, clients might request you to pass a SOC 2 audit every six months. This may be due to heightened security concerns or specific compliance requirements for sensitive data. This is rare, but it can happen if there’s a particular area of compliance an enterprise customer wants to see assurances on. For example, a financial services client handling large volumes of customer data may want more frequent assurances of your compliance.
SOC 2 compliance reports are official documents that outline audit results and state whether your organization meets SOC 2 guidelines. Only SOC 2 audits performed by a Certified Public Accountant or CPA auditing firm are valid, as CPA firms have the necessary expertise and are authorized to ensure compliance. These external auditors are approved by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants.
SOC 2 attestations usually include the following sections.
The opinion letter provides a summary of the audit. It outlines the scope of the audit and assigns your business a score. Here’s what the different ratings mean:
Your goal with SOC 2 compliance is to show customers an unqualified finding. Unqualified with issues is also acceptable, but you may need to show clients proof that you’ve made the recommended changes.
Every SOC 2 report states the review period the certification covers. For Type I reports, this is a specific date, such as August 21, 2023. Type II reports list a date range like January 1 to December 31, 2023.
If your report covers January 1 to June 30, 2023, it would be valid until mid-2024. For annual reports, it’s common for organizations to start the review period for the next audit as soon as they receive the current year’s certification.
These sections cover the audit from your team’s point of view. You can explain the ways your business has followed SOC 2 trust criteria, describe system controls in more detail, and explain which controls are outside of your scope. This is also the place to emphasize changes you have already implemented to make your system more secure and compliant.
This section contains the meat of the auditor’s conclusions. It goes into great detail on your security policies, company processes, controls, and current implementation.
Clients are likely to carefully review your compliance in each area of TSC: security, privacy, confidentiality, availability, and processing integrity. This evidence review is why you need to pass a SOC 2 audit each year to build confidence in your organization’s data security practices.
CPA audit firms usually charge by the hour, so the cost of a SOC 2 audit depends on how complex your system is, what type of readiness assessment you choose, and how many documents the auditor needs to look at. SOC 2 Type II audits that cover review periods of six months to a year can cost $10,000 to $50,000 (or more).
Is it worth spending tens of thousands of dollars every year for SOC 2 certification? The answer depends heavily on your industry, services, and clients. Key factors include the sensitivity of the data you handle, client expectations, regulatory requirements, and the potential competitive advantage that certification can provide.
If you’re a cloud services provider or SaaS developer, SOC 2 Type II certification (or ISO 27001) is practically mandatory. All of your clients want assurances that you have robust cybersecurity protections and trustworthy organizational privacy policies in place for their data.
The same goes for FinTech, lending, and investment firms. Financial services businesses have customers who want to safeguard data, privacy, capital, and other assets. It’s not surprising that SOC 2 compliance is high on their list of priorities. In this case, the cost of annual SOC 2 audits is nothing compared to the revenue gained.
Many healthcare organizations pursue SOC 2 compliance alongside HIPAA compliance. Government contractors and DoD supply chain vendors benefit from up-to-date SOC 2 reports (or NIST) with CMMC, DFAR, and ITAR compliance.
SOC 2 Type I reports only look at point-in-time compliance, which makes them faster but also less useful. Depending on your current compliance, the audit takes about two months. Type II reports include a review window that ranges from three months to a year. Besides this compliance observation period, the audit often takes four to six months from start to finish.
Many organizations are moving away from the old “getting ready for the auditor” mindset. Instead, the goal is to meet data security standards continually with ongoing compliance monitoring. This improves the efficiency, effectiveness, and organizational benefits of InfoSec controls, providing stronger cybersecurity for client data and business assets.
Compliance software is key to a continual monitoring framework. With it, your organization can create secure workflows, track controls, verify compliance, and generate support documentation automatically. With Compyl, you don’t have to ask how long a SOC 2 report is valid for because you have everything you need for your next certification audit. Learn more about Compyl’s SOC 2 compliance features right away.
