What is SOC 2 (SOC 2)?

What it is

SOC 2 is a standard defined by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). It specifies five Trust Services Criteria (TSC): Security, Availability, Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, and Privacy. Security is the only required criterion. The others are optional and chosen based on what the service organization offers.

An independent CPA firm audits the organization's controls against the chosen criteria and issues a report. There are two report types:

• Type I covers whether controls are designed appropriately at a single point in time.
• Type II covers whether controls operated effectively over a period, typically 6 to 12 months.

Type II reports carry more weight with buyers because they show sustained operation, not just a snapshot.

Why it matters

Enterprise customers, especially in financial services, healthcare, and SaaS, routinely require a SOC 2 Type II report before signing contracts. Without one, deals stall or die in security review. A clean report signals that an organization has documented policies, access controls, incident response procedures, change management processes, and monitoring in place.

SOC 2 also creates internal discipline. Preparing for an audit forces teams to close gaps in areas like encryption, logging, vendor management, and business continuity.

How tools address it

Compliance management platforms and GRC tools help organizations prepare for and maintain SOC 2 compliance. They typically:

• Map controls to the Trust Services Criteria automatically
• Collect evidence from cloud infrastructure, identity providers, and endpoint tools
• Track control owners and remediation tasks
• Generate audit-ready reports for the CPA firm