What is SOC 2 compliance?
SOC 2 defines criteria for managing customer data based on five “trust service principles”—security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy. SOC 2 compliance was developed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA).
SOC 2 compliance reports are unique to each organization. In line with specific business practices, each designs its own controls to comply with one or more of the trust principles. These internal reports provide you (along with regulators, business partners, suppliers, etc.) with important information about how your service provider manages data.
There are two types of SOC compliance reports:
- Type I describes a vendor’s systems and whether their design is suitable to meet relevant trust principles as of a specified date
- Type II details the operational effectiveness of those systems throughout a specified period.
You may want to pursue a SOC 2 report if you handle customer data and/or you work with larger enterprises who will want to ensure that you are a secure vendor.
{{cta_withimage1="/cta-modules"}}





Join John Hammond—cybersecurity researcher, practitioner, and content creator with nearly two million YouTube subscribers—and Vanta’s Matt Cooper, Vanta’s Director of GRC, for a fireside chat on AI, security maturity, and the top security risks in 2025.

Watch our special Ask Me Almost Anything (AMAA) session featuring Vanta CISO Jadee Hanson, along with Mandy Matthew, Senior Security Risk Program Manager at Duolingo, and Divya Singh, Senior Director of Compliance and Privacy at Chegg.