Ensuring the security of information and data in the digital era has become a necessity for every business. Virtualization, mobile solutions, social and big data are pushing the limits of traditional security mechanisms.
Regulatory compliance positively impacts the security maturity level of organizations; however, it doesn’t guarantee that weaknesses won’t be exploited by cyber-criminals.
Framework fatigue is real, and it starts with a bad first choice
Numerous frameworks are available in the market. NIST CSF, ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA – all are valid, and all require substantial effort and investment to roll out effectively.
The easy thing to do is just jump on whatever a prospect or partner asks for first, since that’s typically a reaction to implied pressure and doesn’t involve a deliberate approach to building a program.
The wiser course almost always begins with a gap analysis – a clear assessment of where your organization’s security practices stand compared to your acceptable risk envelope and your target customers’ requirements.
The term “We didn’t know there was a better way to do this” is an all-too-common expression of regret in this field, as company after company jumps directly into maintenance mode on a trio of separate, paper-based compliance programs that each don’t adequately manage 30% of the same security issues.
Geography shapes the decision more than most teams realize
The first typical decision point is between international and North American. ISO 27001 is the global standard – recognized across Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and increasingly required for government contracts in North America as well.
It’s a certification based on an “Information Security Management System” (ISMS) meaning it’s about verifying that your approach to managing security is robust, not just whether specific controls are in place or not.
SOC 2 is an American (and to some extent Canadian) standard. From a structural perspective, it’s not a certification at all – it’s an audit report attesting to how you implement security controls around customer data as they relate to predefined “Trust Services Criteria”.
Customers in the North American market, and particularly for SaaS vendors selling into enterprise procurement teams in the US, this is increasingly the basic table stakes – in many cases, businesses simply won’t sign without a recent SOC 2 Type II report in hand.
A detailed breakdown of iso 27001 vs soc 2 covers the structural and cost differences between these two paths in depth, but to put it in a nutshell if you’re planning to enter the European market or you’re already there, or the same for Asia-Pacific markets, you’re going to want to go ISO route first.
If on the other hand, you’re situated in North America or planning to make inroads with North American SaaS buyers, SOC 2 maps pretty closely onto the controls you’ll need to build but there is a lot less overlap on the administrative side.
Cross-mapping controls cuts audit fatigue significantly
One aspect that is often overlooked is that most current frameworks have a significant overlap in control requirements.
A good access control policy can meet ISO 27001, SOC 2, NIST CSF, and HIPAA requirements at the same time. What changes is the documentation, and the evidence.
Organizations that implement and run each framework as a standalone program end up duplicating lots of work. They run stand-alone internal audits, collect implicit evidence twice, maintain separate policies for similar requirements in different frameworks, etc.
However, if you invest time in cross-mapping your controls upfront, you can apply single controls to satisfy requirements in multiple frameworks – making the whole program cheaper to run.
This is the scenario where automating the evidence collection becomes mandatory for any company operating in multiple jurisdictions.
You won’t be able to do it with email, chat, and shared excel sheets once you add SOC 2 to your growing ISO 27001 implementation, and you’re forced to comply with GDPR on top of that.
A breach or cyber attack doesn’t wait for you to get your internal data in order, either – instrumentation has luckily become the infrastructure for many organizations rather than optional.
Executive ownership isn’t optional anymore
Current frameworks have evolved from a passive board sign-off. Both ISO 27001’s latest revision and SOC 2’s Trust Services Criteria require documented evidence of top-down security culture and that leadership is reviewing security performance, owns risk decisions, and is participating in the ISMS process.
This does two things: It makes it no longer something you rotate out every three years and marks it as an annual process, and it also makes it something that permeates down into the business owners themselves.
It is no longer good enough for the CIO to have a Secureworks report on their desk that the CEO signed. It now has to be part of the operational governance mechanisms of all business processes.
Compliance as a competitive position
Businesses that view compliance with certifications as a positive signal of a vendor or partner’s maturity, trustworthiness, and commitment to client interests will always increase sales opportunities and likely close deals faster.
No one ever lost a deal because they’re certified (and many have because they’re not) and procurement functions are happier to sign off on those pesky 40-page SaaS contracts when a third party is monitoring your security, even if they’re not thrilled you’ve got an application overlay on their SAP system.
