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SOC 2
Ali Aleali
Co-Founder & Principal Consultant, CISSP, CCSP
Former security architect for Bank of Canada and Payments Canada. 20+ years building compliance programs for critical infrastructure. Ali leads Truvo's SOC 2, ISO 27001, and CMMC engagements, bringing enterprise-grade security architecture to growing companies.
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SOC 2 CC5.1: Selecting and Developing Control Activities
SOC 2 CC5.1 requires an organization to select and develop control activities that reduce its risks to an acceptable level, choosing each control...
SOC 2 CC2.3: External Communication
SOC 2 CC2.3 requires an organization to communicate with external parties about matters that affect how its internal control operates, and to give...
SOC 2 CC3.1: Specifying Objectives With Enough Clarity to Assess Risk
SOC 2 CC3.1 requires an entity to state its objectives clearly enough that the risks to those objectives can be identified and assessed. It opens the...
SOC 2 CC3.2: Identifying and Analyzing Risk to Your Objectives
SOC 2 CC3.2 requires an entity to identify risks to its objectives across the whole organization and to analyze them well enough to decide how each...
SOC 2 CC1.4: Commitment to Competence
SOC 2 CC1.4 requires an organization to attract, develop, and retain people who are competent to carry out their responsibilities, and to hold...
SOC 2 CC2.1: Quality Information Supporting Controls
SOC 2 CC2.1 requires an organization to obtain or generate and use relevant, quality information so that its internal controls can function. It opens...
SOC 2 CC1.3: Structures, Reporting Lines, and Authorities
SOC 2 CC1.3 requires management, with board oversight, to set up the organizational structures, reporting lines, and authorities the business needs...
SOC 2 CC1.1: Integrity and Ethical Values
SOC 2 CC1.1 requires an organization to demonstrate a commitment to integrity and ethical values, starting with how the board and management behave...
SOC 2 CC4.2: Evaluating and Communicating Deficiencies
SOC 2 CC4.2 requires an organization to evaluate the deficiencies its monitoring turns up and communicate them, in a timely way, to the people who...
SOC 2 CC4.1: Ongoing and Separate Evaluations
SOC 2 CC4.1 requires an organization to select, develop, and run a mix of ongoing and separate evaluations to confirm its internal controls are...
SOC 2 CC6.4: Restricting Physical Access to Facilities and Assets
SOC 2 CC6.4 requires that physical access to facilities and protected information assets is restricted to authorized personnel. It sits in the CC6...
SOC 2 CC9.2: Vendor and Business Partner Risk Management
SOC 2 CC9.2 is the vendor and business partner risk criterion: it requires an organization to assess and manage the risks that come from the third...
SOC 2 CC9.1: Risk Mitigation for Business Disruptions
SOC 2 CC9.1 is the risk mitigation criterion for business disruptions: it requires an organization to identify, select, and develop activities that...
SOC 2 CC7.2: Monitoring System Components for Anomalies
SOC 2 CC7.2 is the security monitoring criterion in the Trust Services Criteria: it requires an organization to monitor its systems for anomalies and...
SOC 2 CC7.1: Detecting Configuration Changes and New Vulnerabilities
SOC 2 CC7.1 is where the vulnerability management program lives inside the Trust Services Criteria: it requires an organization to detect...
SOC 2 CC6.3: Role-Based Access, Least Privilege, and Segregation of Duties
SOC 2 CC6.3 is where role design meets audit evidence: it requires that access to protected information assets is authorized, modified, or removed...
SOC 2 CC6.2: Registers, Authorizes, and Administers User Access
SOC 2 CC6.2 is the credential lifecycle criterion in the Trust Services Criteria: it requires an organization to register and authorize new users...
SOC 2 CC8.1: Authorizes, Designs, Tests, Approves, and Implements Changes
SOC 2 CC8.1 is the change management criterion: the single criterion in the CC8 series, covering how changes to infrastructure, data, software, and...
What Is GRC in Cyber Security? Governance, Risk, and Compliance Explained
GRC in cyber security stands for governance, risk, and compliance: the discipline of directing a security program (governance), identifying and...
Vendor Risk Assessment: How to Assess Vendors Without Drowning in Questionnaires
A vendor risk assessment is the structured evaluation of a vendor's security and compliance posture, scaled to the access and data that vendor holds....
What Is Security Architecture? A Practitioner's Guide
Security architecture is the practice of understanding a system component by component and connection by connection. In practice it comes down to two...
How to Create a Security Architecture Diagram (With a Worked Example)
A security architecture diagram is a boxes-and-arrows drawing of a system: boxes for the key components, arrows for the data flows or network flows...
Who Advises on Security Architecture and Design? The Five Options Compared
Advice on security architecture and design should come from someone with a deep understanding of cybersecurity practice: ideally ten or more years in...
The Security Architecture Review Process: Phases, Checklist, and Deliverables
A security architecture review is a structured walk through a system's components and connections, checking each against security best practices and...
SOC 1 vs SOC 2: Which Report Do You Need?
A SOC 1 report covers the controls at a service organization that are relevant to its customers' financial reporting, known as internal control over...
What Is a SOC Report? SOC 1, SOC 2, and SOC 3 Explained
A SOC report (System and Organization Controls report) is an independent auditor's attestation report on a service organization's controls, issued by...
Third Party Risk Management (TPRM): What It Is and How to Build a Program
Third party risk management (TPRM) is the discipline of identifying, assessing, and controlling the risks that come from the external organizations a...
What Is a Vulnerability Scan? What It Finds, What It Misses, and How Often to Run One
A vulnerability scan is an automated check that compares systems, software, and configurations against a database of known security weaknesses and...
Vulnerability Assessment Services: What They Include, What They Cost, and How to Choose a Provider
Vulnerability assessment services are engagements where a third party inventories an environment, scans it for known security weaknesses, validates...
SOC 2 User Access Reviews and Onboarding: The Playbook
SOC 2 personnel controls come down to three moments: onboarding on day one, the periodic user access review that confirms access still matches the...