In today’s age businesses are conducted in a distributed environment with third-party service organizations and vendors providing critical services to enable organizations fulfill their business objectives. As a service organization, you are a part of the critical supply chain that delivers solutions to you client. You handle, store, or transmit data that your clients outsource to you. You may be a hosting provider, or an organization that monitors network traffic, or a company that manages payroll for its client, you are obliged to validate the security of your systems and establish controls so as to prevent any data breaches or lapses that could jeopardize the integrity of the entire supply chain.

The SolarWinds attack in 2020 has only underscored the importance of service providers instituting stringent controls and processes that do not jeopardize their client’s data and business operations. It is, therefore, important that service organizations reaffirm their commitment to security by going through an audit that yields a System and Organization Controls Report, or simply, a SOC report, which serves as an evidence to your clients and stakeholders that you have the controls and processes in place to safeguard the data of your clients, and to prevent your systems from being used as channels into your client’s network.

SOC reports (SOC 1 and SOC 2), produced during the audit process, are a part of the Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements no. 18 (SSAE 18) standard defined by American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). Depending on your client’s requirement, you may be required to produce either a SOC 1 or a SOC 2 report. A SOC 1 report is required when the data you process is related to your client’s financial data and has a bearing on your client’s financial reporting. A SOC 1 audit is carried out to determine if adequate controls are in place to safeguard your client’s valuable financial data. However, may organizations require their service providers to provide a SOC 2 report, which is an audit of controls that is more expansive in its scope It is not limited only to financial data; it is focused on addressing how a service provider addresses the issues related to privacy, security, availability, processing integrity, and confidentiality of client’s data.

SOC compliance can seem daunting, but GRM Technologies is here to help. Our highly-experienced experts will bring to bear their perspective on how to harden your system and attain the SOC report to convey to your customers and the marketplace that you are fit-for-purpose and willing to go to any lengths to protect and preserve your client’s data.

Whether you provide managed services, application services, or third-party services for your clients, at GRM Technologies at GRM, we will conduct a detailed gap analysis to determine your current level of compliance and outline the steps needed to achieve full compliance with SOC. This includes a comprehensive assessment of your network and security infrastructure, data flow analysis, and configuration reviews of different system components. We will also conduct interviews with key staff members to determine if there are any edge cases that need to be considered.

Our compliance and security experts will then offer detailed guidance to bring your systems to comply with the Trust Services Principles of the SSAE 18 standard. This includes installing and maintaining properly configured firewalls; creating effective network segmentation; ensuring that data at rest and in transit is made unintelligible by using encryption; implementing a robust vulnerability management program that covers measures to harden the IT environment against malware attacks. We will also help you implement strong access control measures so that exposure to sensitive data is limited on a need-to-know basis by users who have been authenticated. Our team will work with you to set up a security operations center that monitors and tracks access to network resources and sensitive data, thereby allowing you to assess and detect any possible fraudulent activity in an organization We will also carry out vulnerability assessments and penetration testing periodically or at any time there is a significant change to the system thereby uncovering vulnerabilities and preempting any risks.

In addition, we will also work with you to set up an effective business continuity management plan, and an incident response team that is well-equipped to deal with the threats to your system, and in the event of a breach follow the standard operating procedure to restore your system to a minimum-viable operating level.

Our team will carry out extensive trainings and internal audits to set you up for success. We believe compliance is a continuous process and with GRM Technologies by your side, you can be rest assured that we will help you achieve and maintain your SOC compliance, and establish the necessary cybersecurity controls to preserve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your data.