SOC 2 stands for System and Organization Controls 2. It is a voluntary compliance standard developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) specifically designed for service organizations that store customer data in the cloud. Unlike other certifications that have a rigid ‘pass/fail’ checklist, SOC 2 is a reporting framework. It provides an independent assessment of how a company manages data based on five ‘Trust Services Criteria’: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. The result is a detailed report that gives stakeholders, such as customers and partners, the confidence that their data is being handled with a high level of security. It is essentially the gold standard for SaaS companies and cloud service providers looking to prove their security posture to the enterprise market.
