Getting Risky: Cybersecurity & Compliance Recap with Casted CPO, Adam Patarino

Cybersecurity is all about risk management and trust. It’s critical in both the B2B and the enterprise spaces. If you want your SaaS business to be taken seriously by enterprises, getting a SOC 2 certificate is a good idea.

Let’s dive into cyber security compliance, how to achieve it with ease, and why a proactive approach to cyber security is so important.

Why do SaaS startups need to have strong cybersecurity?

Many startups or SaaS businesses believe that they don’t need to invest in a strong cyber security posture because they don’t think they have valuable data. In a way, their risk profile could genuinely be smaller, but not always.

However, when a small business seeks work opportunities with enterprise customers, cybersecurity becomes a big deal. In a tech chain, being the weakest link will quickly have you kicked out.

One method to prove your company is trustworthy is to pursue a SOC 2 certification.

What is SOC 2 certification?

SOC 2 is a kind of voluntary compliance standard developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA). It is meant for companies that offer services (e.g., SaaS companies). Outside auditors will assess whether your company complies with SOC 2’s five trust service principles.

The principles are:

Security

There should be security measures put into place to prevent unauthorized access, theft, or removal of data, software, and other important assets. SOC 2 auditors may look for security tools such as firewalls, multi-factor authentication (MFA), and intrusion detection tools.

Availability

Availability refers to the monitoring of network performance and availability, site failover (being able to switch your operations to a backup system), and other ways your company handles incidents.

Integrity of Processing

Processing integrity means that when data is processed, it should be done in a complete, timely, and valid manner. It also, of course, needs to be authorized.

Confidentiality

Data being erroneously disclosed or accessed will severely hurt your confidentiality levels. It’s important that you have the proper encryption, strong access controls, and other safeguard measures in place.

Privacy

SOC 2 certification requires companies to address the importance of data privacy. Personally identifiable information (PII) should be protected from unauthorized access through reasonable security controls.

You can listen to this conversation in Trava's podcast, The Tea on Cybersecurity, below.

Benefits of becoming SOC 2 certified for a SaaS company

At the end of the day, it does cost money to get SOC 2 certified, which is something that scares people away. But the return on investment is worth it – it’s possible to equate monetary value to your company’s bottom line that is linked with SOC 2 compliance.

1. You show that you value cyber security and gain a competitive advantage

Having a SOC 2 certificate clearly demonstrates to other enterprises very clearly that you take cyber security seriously. Customers and other businesses alike prefer to work with SaaS companies that obviously have robust cybersecurity practices. IT and cloud services in particular, absolutely need to have adequate security. A security breach can lead to catastrophic cybersecurity incidents.

2. You can effectively improve your cyber security

The in-depth assessment of your cyber security posture can help you figure out what security controls you can build on and how you can improve your company’s cyber security. The sooner you try to get SOC 2 certified, the easier it will be to get your routines in place and gather evidence.

With a SOC 2 badge, you can go to a large company like Salesforce or IBM, and they won’t be wary of you because you have shown proof of your risk management efforts.

3. Auditing is easier when you are smaller

Smaller SaaS companies actually have the benefit of their auditing processes being less complex in the beginning. If your foundation is shaky, the audit will be able to guide you toward fixing it. You don’t need a very expensive restructure around your cyber security – you can instead make changes before that is necessary.

What tools and strategies should SaaS companies use to ensure both security and compliance?

Compliance is tricky, it’s true. From Europe’s GDPR compliance laws affecting American companies to new cookie and privacy policies, security compliance can be a real headache.

Still, it’s critical to make sure that you are respectful of your customers’ and partners’ sensitive data and processing it while complying with data privacy and security standards.

Using third-party tools and software can help facilitate certain security measures within your company. For example, cyber security awareness training has been shown to be significantly beneficial to companies. Training software can help you reduce risk and streamline training across your organization.

If you’re looking for more help with cybersecurity compliance, don’t hesitate to reach out to our team of experts at Trava to learn more and explore how a partnership with us would benefit you.