SOC 2 Compliant Tech Services In Los Angeles

SOC 2 Compliant Tech Services In Los Angeles

Organizations with no security measures often experience frequent cyber threats and crimes that lead to data breaches, hefty fines, and penalties. Statistics show that 260 companies experienced ransomware attacks in California between 2020 and 2021. This is why it is imperative to ensure your data is highly secured to avoid such incidences that can cost your organization in the long run.

Security compliance is even more vital if you plan to outsource your IT services to a third-party service provider. Outsourcing your IT services provides many benefits, but you should be careful with the managed service provider you hire.

Before outsourcing your IT services, you should ensure that the vendor is SOC 2 compliant. This helps you keep your customer’s data safe from hackers, and you won’t have to worry about data breaches. Read on to learn more about SOC 2 Compliance in Los Angeles.

What is SOC 2 Compliance?

SOC 2 Compliance is a service developed by the American Institute of CPAs that ensures customer data is private and safe within an organization. The Service Organization Control (SOC) reporting platform outlines how companies handle customer data. Its trust principles include security, privacy, availability, processing integrity, and confidentiality.

These trust principles are tailored to the organization’s needs, which could be unique from one organization to another. A company that plans to outsource its IT services can verify and analyze a SOC audit report to measure the integrity of the IT vendor and determine whether to hire them or not.

If the IT vendor doesn’t have SOC 2 certification, you may not want to hire them because of the security risk that could lead to data breaches.

The Trust Principles of SOC 2 Compliance

• Security: Security protects your data and system from being accessed by unauthorized individuals. This SOC principle helps you keep your IT infrastructure safe and free from potential cyber threats that could harm your data. It would be best to work with an experienced vendor such as Generation IX that understands security processes and protocols and will help you meet security compliance standards. This shows that your company is committed to providing secure services for its customers.
• Availability: Customers should be able to access systems whenever necessary. This means the services should be available to customers per an organization’s service level agreement. In this case, a business should monitor and maintain its infrastructure to make all services readily available for its customers. This principle shows that an organization abides by the network performance levels and measures to mitigate potential cyber-attacks.
• Processing integrity: This principle ensures that systems remain error-free whenever customers carry out transactions. The systems should be free from delay, manipulation, authorized access, and data omission. This is even more beneficial for organizations that provide e-commerce or financial services that require high integrity. GenIX maintains integrity when offering all IT services and ensures real-time accurate, authorized, and complete services.
• Confidentiality: If there is a restriction on data sharing within an organization, it should be included in the audit report. The IT vendor should protect business and customer data from authorized access. Some confidential information could consist of customer contact details and business plans, among other information. The SOC 2 audit report should contain the methods and procedures that the IT vendor uses to protect business data. Being keen on these audit principles will help you stay committed to withholding service level agreements with your customers.
• Privacy: Do you handle customer data? Then privacy is vital and should appear on the SOC 2 report. Your organization should maintain its privacy standards to protect its customers at all costs. The data could be customer name, address details, and social security number. Your organization should protect this data from authorized access to prevent identify-theft and other data breaches. Verifying this category helps you stay compliant and committed to safeguarding your customer data against malicious activities.

Why Should An IT Organization In LA Be SOC 2 Compliant?

Security Compliance Gives You a Competitive Advantage

Today, customers are cleverer than ever before. They are aware of the increased security issues across various networks and are looking for secure businesses to transact with.

If a customer discovers that their systems aren’t secure, they will likely move on to the next-door competitor. This is why it is best to hire a security-compliant IT service provider to keep your IT infrastructure safe and make your customers feel secure doing business with you.

The beauty of this is that you may end up having a higher market share than your competitors who aren’t SOC compliant. For instance, GenIX has secure systems that help your customers transact safely, no matter the kind of services you offer. Customers can transact quickly and effectively without losing their details to online hackers, thus enabling you to stay ahead of the crowd regardless of the competition within your niche.

Protects and Boosts Brand Reputation

Increased technological trends allow people to access businesses anytime, anywhere. If they notice that your brand has a negative image because of poor security measures, you will likely lose such customers, and your business might take time to pickup again.

However, with SOC compliance, you can be sure of a good reputation for your brand. The certification is evidence that you have taken all the measures to protect your customer data and prevent data breaches. This helps build your brand credibility and opens up multiple avenues to generate more leads and sales for your business.

Customers will know that you’re doing your best and applying security practices to protect their data from cyber crimes. The good thing about increased brand visibility is that you do not struggle to market your business. This is an easy and effective strategy to increase your market share without spending more money marketing your business.

Improved Services with Minimal or No Business Disruptions

The wish of every business person is to serve their customers all the time without disruptions. But this may not be the case for organizations that do not have high-security standards. For instance, it is easy for hackers to strive anytime, hack your systems and manipulate your data, causing business distractions that can even stall your business.

But this isn’t the case if you are working with a compliant security vendor such as GenIX. The vendor has the SOC 2 certification and expertise to protect your systems against any malicious attacks that can stall your business.

You will also deploy measures to ensure high operating security standards against cyber-attacks. As a result, you can be sure of continuous operation regardless of the time of the day. This helps you offer better services to your customers without worrying about data breaches and business disruptions, thus, leading to increased efficiency and progressive business growth.

Gives You Peace of Mind 

When you have a secure IT infrastructure, you do not have to worry about data breaches, poor business reputation, loss of customers, fines, and penalties. You will continue your operations knowing that your IT vendor follows security standards and can handle your IT systems with minimal to no disruptions. This also enables your IT teams to focus on other activities that contribute to the growth of your business.

However, this is only possible if you follow up with your IT vendor and determine whether they practice the security standards outlined in the SOC 2 report. If the vendor doesn’t practice the security standards, you may likely experience security issues along the way. Therefore, follow up with your managed service provider and ensure they are well-positioned with their security control services.

Improved Data Integrity for Your Business and Customers 

Data is a vital element in your organization, and you will do all it takes to protect it from potential data breaches. One error can affect your business and integrity and bring it down in no time. Therefore, it is vital to be security compliant to curb threats and maintain high security standards for the benefit of your organization. Upholding high data integrity enables you to provide accurate, complete, and quality services to your customers, and this should be maintained for a longer period within your IT infrastructure. Here are the benefits of upholding high data integrity.

• It helps you detect potential threats in your IT infrastructure.
• It enables you to maintain quality, accurate and complete data.
• Detect errors and identify mistakes that could affect your data.
• Keep a close eye on cyber threats and ensure your data is protected.

With improved security standards, you will check for elements that can affect the integrity of your data and take measures to curb the risks before it is too late. This helps you achieve and maintain data integrity, thus saving you the time, money, and effort you’d spend if you experienced data manipulation.

Assured Security within Your IT Infrastructure 

Security is the main element that could make you consider SOC 2 Compliance. This report helps you understand your security controls and determine whether your business and customer data is safe or not. You will be in a better position to fight back cyber-attacks and data security breaches while also maintaining the industry’s security standards.

The main reason behind this is to protect your data from potential hackers that can manipulate your systems and use the data against you, thus, affecting the reputation of your business. With high-security standards, you can be sure of established best practices and protocols that protect your IT infrastructure from unauthorized access and malicious activities.

SOC 2 Compliance Builds Customer Trust 

Customers are aware of increased security risks, and they would want their data to stay safe. They can easily trust an organization that assures them of high-security data measures. With improved security, it is for your customers to trust your services, thus, helping you to build long-lasting relationships for the benefit of your organization.

SOC 2 Compliance shows your customers that you have all it takes to protect their data from potential risks and that you are serious about security. Compliance enables you to provide customer services with increased security and privacy, thus, increasing customer retention, referrals, leads, and sales in the long run.

A SOC 2 complaint IT vendor such as GenIX takes responsibility for ensuring your data is safe from authorized access. Because of increased security, your customers can quickly build trust in your brand and stay with you for extended periods.

Why Should A Managed IT Service Provider Be SOC 2 Compliant?

When looking for a vendor, you want to ensure that you hire someone who can protect your data from potential data breaches that can harm your organization’s image. This is why you should check whether the IT vendor is SOC 2 compliant or not.

Below are reasons why an IT vendor should be SOC Compliant.

• SOC compliance proves that the IT vendor takes information security seriously.
• It shows that the service provider adheres to the necessary security controls and can keep data safe.
• It covers all five elements, showing that the vendor can deliver IT services seamlessly.
• It shows that the vendor can manage risks, corporate governance, and internal security processes.
• The SOC report covers all technical perspectives, enabling you to focus your attention on the ability of the IT vendor to manage your IT infrastructure.

Many IT vendors aren’t SOC 2 Compliant yet because it is voluntary and probably because it costs time and money to complete the process and get the certification. However, some IT vendors such as GenIX understand the need to be security compliant. This helps the vendor to provide secure IT solutions to their customers.

Choosing a SOC 2 Compliant Vendor for Your IT Solutions in Los Angeles

When looking for an outsourced vendor to manage your IT infrastructure in Los Angeles, you should ensure that the service provider has SOC 2 certification. At GenIX, we are SOC 2 compliant and offer high-security services that help our clients stay ahead of cyber threats. We are an IT security company you can trust with all your IT needs. If you are looking for a certified IT vendor in Los Angeles, we can help. We have a team of IT professionals who can take you through our security best practices and our approach to upholding high-security measures that can help you achieve your IT needs in real-time. Contact us today to speak to an IT professional.

Thanks to the team at DataEcon in Dallas for their help with this article.