True Compliance Automation, Beyond the Screenshots

“Compliance doesn’t have to SOC 2 much.”, a witty catchphrase used by a compliance automation organization that some may regard as a standard for attaining SOC compliance. While the phrase makes sense, and there’s a belief that compliance should be painless, it should also be noted that compliance should also be understandable, comprehensive, and continuous.

When trying to gain the trust of clients and partners alike, certain aspects of compliance should be understood not only by an auditing party but, of course, by the organization itself. Different aspects of the process of maintaining compliance are beneficial for the growth of an organization, so why not understand it?

In many cases, there are some SOC certifying partners that simply tell you what to do for the purpose of compliance. “Have this meeting”, “tweak that firewall”, and “put these items in this folder with screenshots”. For all those audit freaks out there (yes, we know many), screenshots are the devil’s tool! These audit preparedness activities are all pretty manual, and not only is it still relatively manual, but it is also hardly sustainable for an organization that may consistently be growing or changing. This approach is not conducive to a future-thinking and fluid company in today’s market.

In the case of audits, a big focus in an audit is trust. Auditors are here to ask one (of their many questions). “Can we trust that your organization is operating securely?” When an organization employs a third party to assist with obtaining a SOC certification, many aspects must be aligned to ensure compliance integrity. The service provider needs to have complete transparency for auditors to confirm different aspects of their audit reliably. In many cases, these third-party SOC certification organizations will not allow the type of access required to ensure trust in the software they utilize. This is significantly detrimental to the audit. This is seen as a red flag in the IS and compliance space, especially if confidential or non-public information is involved. As a client of the offending company, this doesn’t give a true picture of what mechanisms are in place within the vendor’s security program, discrediting the process in its entirety.

These technologies and their approach are relatively new in the market and can give the perception of innovation. As these technologies are relatively new, they can also have various constraints and work almost as a beautified Google Drive for compliance documentation. It is typical to only assist during audit preparedness and execution at particular times of the year. There is little valuable or actionable information extracted from their systems that would be useful for threat hunting and assessing where the company is in terms of security maturity. After all, you want to commission an all-in-one compliance automation platform rather than an audit checklist and glorified google drive repository.

As a leader in Information Security compliance, Compyl offers what these SOC 2 partners don’t. Trust, efficiency, continuous compliance, and most importantly, transparency. We automate compliance processes, chase those hard-to-get process owners, integrate with various popular workforce tools, and provide over 1000 baseline checks, and that’s only the beginning of our capability. Compliance is more than a SOC; it is about trust, transparency, efficiency, and actionable insights to ensure your organization can continue to grow and remain compliant.