Automate SOC 2 Report Reviews

by Stern Security | Apr 21, 2024 | Education, Third-Party Risk Management

System and Organization Control (SOC) report reviews are a common part of the third-party due diligence function.  These reports can be lengthy, contain elements that you really need to understand and agree to, different reviewers may produce different results, and one must understand how to properly review them.  It is not sufficient enough to only search to see if there are any exceptions noted in the report.  Your team members have better things to do than read through SOC 2 reports all day.  So, how can you automate SOC 2 Report Reviews?  Velocity automates this for you!

Details

Velocity automates all the items necessary to properly review a SOC 2 report including, but not limited to, exceptions, management responses, trust criteria, ensuring the vendor and product match the expected solution, and more.  The platform also extracts the “Complementary User Entity Controls” or CUECs and creates an “Acceptance” column so customers can formally agree to each control that they are responsible for.  Velocity creates an executive report that customers can read instead of having to read a lengthy SOC 2 report.  Customers can include details in the report such as listing the type of data that the vendor has access to.

Benefits

1. Speed – Velocity will give you time back in your day by automating the SOC 2 report review process.
2. Consistency – A company may have multiple employees that analyze a SOC 2 report differently.  Velocity’s automation gives consistent results every time.
3. Accuracy – An employee may miss something when reviewing a SOC 2 report.  Missed details can be costly for a company as this is the process used to identify risks within a third-party.  Velocity is not only fast and consistent, but also accurate with the reviews.  Velocity knows how to properly review a SOC report as it was built by practitioners.
4. Documenting Third-Party Due Diligence – Collecting a SOC 2 report is not enough.  Companies need to document that they reviewed the SOC 2 report and Velocity provides a simple way to do that.

Full Assessment

Even after leveraging the automation within Velocity to review the vendor SOC 2 report, customers can still launch a full assessment on the vendor.  For example, let’s say a customer receives a vendor SOC 2 report and uploads it into Velocity.  The executive report that Velocity generates may contain concerning information about the vendor’s security posture.  The customer can then choose to launch a full velocity assessment on the vendor to fully address the concerns and determine when the vendor will resolve the issues.

Conclusion

There is limited time in the day and Velocity is your go-to platform for automating SOC 2 reviews.  Velocity has the benefits of speed, consistency, accuracy, and provides a way for customers to document their third-party review process.