In today’s digital landscape, data security and compliance are of utmost importance for organisations that handle sensitive information. Software as a service (SaaS) organisations, in particular, often adhere to industry standards like SOC 2 (System and Organization Controls 2) to demonstrate their commitment to data protection and operational integrity. Achieving SOC 2 compliance can be a complex and resource-intensive process, but with the right tools and services, such as AWS Control Tower, organisations can streamline the implementation and enforcement of key SOC 2 controls. In this blog post, we will explore how AWS Control Tower makes it much easier to meet SOC 2 compliance requirements, ensuring the security and availability of data in the cloud.

Understanding SOC 2 Controls

SOC 2 is a framework developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) to assess and report on the security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy of customer data. Each of these five categories contains numerous controls that organisations must implement and maintain to achieve SOC 2 compliance. These controls span a wide range of requirements, from access controls and data encryption to incident response and data backup.

The role of AWS Control Tower in SOC 2 compliance

AWS Control Tower is a powerful service that enables organisations to set up and govern a secure, multi-account AWS environment, using best practices recommended by AWS. By creating a landing zone, AWS Control Tower helps establish a robust foundation that aligns with SOC 2 requirements. Here’s how AWS Control Tower facilitates SOC 2 compliance:

1. Security Controls:

AWS Control Tower ensures that all AWS accounts provisioned within the environment adhere to a predefined set of security guardrails. These guardrails help prevent misconfigurations and enforce security best practices, reducing the risk of unauthorised access and potential security breaches. Additionally, you can monitor your AWS environments for potential malicious activity by having centralised audit logging and threat detection in place with AWS CloudTrail and AWS GuardDuty. AWS Control Tower simplifies the deployment of these services across multiple accounts and environments.

2. Availability Controls:

AWS Control Tower’s automated setup enables you to create a well-architected, multi-account environment that is designed for high availability. This approach minimises the risk of downtime and ensures the continuous availability of critical services.

3. Processing Integrity Controls:

With its built-in monitoring and management capabilities, AWS Control Tower helps track and verify the integrity of data processing activities across AWS accounts, promoting adherence to processing integrity controls.

4. Confidentiality Controls:

AWS Control Tower simplifies access management across multiple AWS accounts through AWS IAM Identity Center (formally AWS SSO). This centralises access control and allows you to define granular permissions, ensuring that confidential information is accessible only to authorised users.

5. Privacy Controls:

By facilitating access controls and user permissions through AWS IAM Identity Center, AWS Control Tower plays a vital role in managing access to sensitive data, in alignment with privacy controls defined in SOC 2.

6. Data Backup and Recovery Controls:

AWS Control Tower can integrate with AWS Backup, a fully managed backup service. This ensures that organisations can easily implement automated backup policies for various AWS resources, fulfilling data backup and recovery requirements under SOC 2.

Conclusion

Maintaining compliance with SOC 2 can be a complex endeavor, but AWS Control Tower significantly simplifies the process. By providing a standardised, secure, and automated environment, AWS Control Tower makes it much easier for you to implement and enforce a good number of SOC 2 controls. From ensuring secure access management to supporting data backup and recovery practices, AWS Control Tower empowers organisations to build a robust cloud infrastructure that aligns with SOC 2 requirements, giving customers and stakeholders the confidence that their data is protected with the highest level of security and integrity.

Are you ready for SOC 2? Do you have sufficient controls in place to pass your audit?

Our AWS Readiness Assessment provides a quick expert check and report of your infrastructure against the common criteria of SOC 2. Book yours now or book a free chat with us to discuss this further.

---

This blog is written exclusively by The Scale Factory team. We do not accept external contributions.