What is a SOC 2 risk assessment template?
A SOC 2 risk assessment template evaluates each vendor's alignment with the information and data security standards of System and Organization Controls 2. Once completed, it could serve as an indicator of an organization's readiness for an external SOC 2 audit and evidence of an organization's resilience to third-party breaches for stakeholders.
A SOC 2 risk assessment template is a very useful tool in a Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM) program, specifically during the vendor onboarding phase. A prospective vendor demonstrating an acceptable data security posture when evaluated with a SOC 2 risk assessment template is more likely to keep your customer data protected during a cyber attack, making them a safe onboarding option.
Third-party vendors could also directly benefit from this assessment tool. Vendors who verify their exemplary data security posture with a SOC 2 risk assessment template and then make that report available to prospective partners could significantly increase their chances of winning new business relationships.
A SOC 2 risk assessment template could demonstrate a prospective vendor's alignment with your third-party cybersecurity standards, serving as a metric for qualified third-party vendor onboarding options.
Why is a SOC 2 risk assessment toolkit important?
Though third-party services are the bedrock of modern scaling strategies, vendors could introduce significant security risks to your organization if not properly vetted through a cybersecurity filter. Securing the vendor onboarding workflow doesn't need to be complicated. It could be as simple as evaluating each prospective vendor's alignment with SOC 2 since the standard has a reputation for setting exemplary information security benchmarks.
A SOC 2 risk assessment template isn't only applicable during the onboarding phase of a TPRM program. Because the SOC 2 audit reports are completed by independent external parties, this document can be used as a reliable source of cybersecurity posture evidence for vendor risk assessments, making a SOC 2 risk assessment template toolkit potentially the primary mechanism for surfacing third-party security risk for vendor risk assessments.
What is included in a SOC 2 risk assessment template?
The SOC 2 risk assessment template toolkit, available to download on this page, consists of two files: a SOC 2 vendor security questionnaire template and a SOC 2 risk assessment template.
1. SOC 2 vendor security questionnaire template
The SOC 2 security questionnaire template in this toolkit is used to collect information about a vendor's security practices in the context of the Service Organization Control 2 standard.
The SOC 2 vendor cybersecurity questionniare template maps the following five Trust Services Criteria (TSC), the framework through SOC 2 audits are conducted to evaluate compliance.
- Security: The level of protection applied to system resources to prevent unauthorized access.
- Availability: Accessibility of systems, services, and products as outlined in SLA agreements.
- Confidentiality: Whether sensitive data is kept confidential and protected from unauthorized exposure
- Processing Integrity: Whether systems can process data without impeding integrity
- Privacy: The assurance of customer data protection and transparency of customer data collection, retention, and disposal practices.
The questionnaire component of this SOC 2 risk assessment template is sent to vendors to collect information about their data security practices to evaluate their level of alignment with the SOC 2 standard.
The questionnaire is divided into two sections: one for the vendor and the other for internal use based on the vendor's responses.
Vendor component of the SOC 2 questionnaire template
In this SOC 2 vendor questionnaire template, there are two corresponding response fields for each question:
- Primary response: A “Yes,” “No,” or “Not Applicable” response
- Implementation details: A brief explanation of how the secure measures associated with the question have been implemented.
Third-party vendors should always provide implementation details for each question. For "No" or "Not Applicable" responses, this field should explain why corresponding security controls were omitted.
Providing implementation details for all responses will avoid time-consuming follow-up questions that unnecessarily delay assessment completions.
The internal component of the SOC 2 questionnaire template
The internal security team completes the internal component of the SOC 2 questionnaire template. This section evaluates the impact of SOC 2 alignment risks discovered through each vendor's responses. Internal security teams have four fields to complete:
- Risk Severity: A qualitative assessment of the potential impact of the identified risk.
- Risk Treatment: Indicates the priority level of corresponding remediation actions.
- Treatment Plan Details: A summary of necessary remediation responses to reduce risk severity to acceptable levels.
- Risk Owner: The individual responsible for managing and monitoring risk remediation and management processes.
2. SOC 2 risk assessment template
The second document in this SOC 2 risk assessment template toolkit is the SOC 2 risk assessment template. This document consolidates the SOC 2 alignment risk findings in the questionnaire template into a report ready to be shared with stakeholders.
Once completed, a SOC 2 risk assessment template can be used as a basis for each vendor's risk treatment plan.
SOC 2 risk assessment template example
Here are some snapshots of the main components of a SOC 2 risk assessment template.
1. Vendor overview and main objectives of the NIST 800-53 risk assessment
Overviews the vendor being assessed against the System and Organization Controls 2 standard. If the SOC 2 standard is your primary third-party risk management framework, the objective of this risk assessment could be to mitigate the potential of third-party breaches.
2. Evidence used to generate the NIST 800-53 risk assessment template
A list of all the vendor security questionnaires and additional evidence sources that were referenced to complete the SOC 2 risk assessment template. This questionnaire list should at least include the SOC 2 vendor security questionnaire template included in this toolkit.
If a SOC 2 audit report or cybersecurity certification is provided, list it in the Additional Evidence table.
3. Executive summary
Summarizes the vendor's key SOC 2 alignment risks, security posture and recommended follow-up risk treatment plans.
4. Vendor background
An overview of the vendor's service offerings and why these services are essential for meeting key business objectives.
Justifying the necessity of each vendor's services demonstrates good cyber hygiene by striving to keep the organization's attack surface minimal.
5. Assessment summary
Evaluates the vendor's security posture and subsequent risk treatment plans across six categories:
- Security Policies and Processes
- Infrastructure and Asset Management
- Data Classification and Handling
- Application Security
- Risk Management
- Recovery and Response
Below is an example of the Security Policies and Processes risk category field in the SOC 2 risk assessment template available in this toolkit. The number of detected risks in each category across four severity levels are indicated to the right.
6. Key risks
This section consolidates all of the risk findings and associated risk treatment plans uncovered in this assessment period. Readers preferring a quick summary of the findings of this completed SOC 2 risk assessment template would skip to this section.
How to use the SOC 2 risk assessment template
The following process explains how to use their risk assessment and questionnaire templates provided in the SOC 2 risk assessment toolkit download offered on this page.
Step 1: Understand all of the five TSCs of SOC 2
Familiarize yourself with the five Trust Services Criteria of SOC 2. Since alignment with SOC 2 is voluntary, you can customize a mapping strategy to each criterion based on your unique Third-Party Risk Management objectives. Document how your current security controls map to the 5 TSCs of SOC 2 and your ideal mapping strategy.
Step 2: Customize the questionnaire
Use the document of your desired SOC 2 mapping strategy to filter the most relevant questions in the SOC 2 questionnaire template. Modifying the questionnaire is voluntary since less relevant questions could provide helpful context when evaluating the vendor's security posture.
Step 3: Send the questionnaire
Send the questionnaire to each vendor being evaluated against the SOC 2 standard, asking them to focus only on the vendor component of the sheet. Request implementation details for all responses, even those marked as not applicable.
Step 4: Evaluate vendor responses
Complete the internal component of the questionnaire template, indicating risk severity levels and treatment plans for each vendor's response.
Step 5: Complete the SOC 2 risk assessment template
Summarise the cyber risks and treatment plans uncovered through the vendor's completed questionnaire in the SOC 2 risk assessment template. Aim to avoid excessive cybersecurity jargon to make the report easy to understand for all stakeholders.
Step 6: Monitor ongoing alignment with SOC 2
Use this SOC 2 risk assessment template to regularly evaluate each vendor's alignment with SOC 2. SOC 2 risk assessments should be triggered outside of assessment schedules whenever new cyber threats likely to impact your vendor network emerge, such as a fouth-party vendor (your vendor's vendor) suffering a data breach.
