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SOC 2 automation: Empowering auditors and companies
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March 23, 2020

SOC 2 automation: Empowering auditors and companies

You’ve heard about SOC 2 reporting, and your company wants to obtain a SOC 2. You want a clear and shareable way to communicate to potential customers your commitment to strong security practices.


A SOC 2 report is a standardized and widely recognized way to assure your customers, prospects, and business partners that your services are secure, reliable, and trustworthy. Created by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), the SOC 2 audit and reporting process involves the assessment and documentation of your company’s verified security practices. To complete a SOC 2 audit, your company’s security measures must be reviewed and verified by a certified auditor. (For more background on SOC 2, check out Vanta's SOC 2 Guide.)


Only licensed CPA firms can perform a SOC 2 examination. Previously, to conduct a SOC 2 audit, your single option was to find a CPA firm and embark upon a multilayered audit review process with significant manual data collection requirements — which would, in turn, require substantial time from your team. SOC 2 reporting has typically involved many hours with an auditor on-site in advance of your audit; auditors would conduct in-depth interviews with staff, and work with your team to manually collect evidence regarding your security processes. Following this pre-audit work, companies would spend time implementing any recommended fixes to their security systems to prepare for the audit itself — which would include further interviews and additional evidence collection. This was followed by an auditor’s time to document the lengthy process, and, finally, to write the report.

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Access Review Stage Content / Functionality
Across all stages
  • Easily create and save a new access review at a point in time
  • View detailed audit evidence of historical access reviews
Setup access review procedures
  • Define a global access review procedure that stakeholders can follow, ensuring consistency and mitigation of human error in reviews
  • Set your access review frequency (monthly, quarterly, etc.) and working period/deadlines
Consolidate account access data from systems
  • Integrate systems using dozens of pre-built integrations, or “connectors”. System account and HRIS data is pulled into Vanta.
  • Upcoming integrations include Zoom and Intercom (account access), and Personio (HRIS)
  • Upload access files from non-integrated systems
  • View and select systems in-scope for the review
Review, approve, and deny user access
  • Select the appropriate systems reviewer and due date
  • Get automatic notifications and reminders to systems reviewer of deadlines
  • Automatic flagging of “risky” employee accounts that have been terminated or switched departments
  • Intuitive interface to see all accounts with access, account accept/deny buttons, and notes section
  • Track progress of individual systems access reviews and see accounts that need to be removed or have access modified
  • Bulk sort, filter, and alter accounts based on account roles and employee title
Assign remediation tasks to system owners
  • Built-in remediation workflow for reviewers to request access changes and for admin to view and manage requests
  • Optional task tracker integration to create tickets for any access changes and provide visibility to the status of tickets and remediation
Verify changes to access
  • Focused view of accounts flagged for access changes for easy tracking and management
  • Automated evidence of remediation completion displayed for integrated systems
  • Manual evidence of remediation can be uploaded for non-integrated systems
Report and re-evaluate results
  • Auditor can log into Vanta to see history of all completed access reviews
  • Internals can see status of reviews in progress and also historical review detail
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