Diving into the World of SOC 2 Compliance in the Era of Cloud Native Technologies
If you're in the business of handling customer data, you're likely familiar with the term SOC 2. This crucial audit report focuses on the non-financial reporting controls of a Service Organization, particularly relating to system security. Based on the AICPA's Trust Service Criteria, SOC 2 is designed to help users assess and address the risks associated with service providers, ensuring customer data is secure and organisations are adhering to the latest cybersecurity standards.
However, adopting cloud-native technologies, such as containers and Kubernetes, introduces new compliance challenges when it comes to SOC 2. Containers, known for their ephemeral nature, can be stopped, destroyed, rebuilt, and replaced, making it difficult to identify compliance status and when a container no longer complies.
To navigate this complex landscape, let's explore some key components of SOC 2 compliance:
CC 6.1: This component emphasizes the importance of logical access security software, infrastructure, and architectures to protect information assets from security events. A crucial aspect of CC 6.1 is standardizing your infrastructure configuration.
CC 6.6: This component involves implementing logical access security measures to protect against threats from sources outside the system boundaries. It focuses on vulnerability scanning of infrastructure and application containers. Since Kubernetes is an open-source technology, packages and containers running core Kubernetes workloads may introduce known vulnerabilities. Hence, inspecting containers to inventory risk is critical for SOC 2 compliance.
CC 6.8: This component highlights the need for controls to prevent or detect and act upon the introduction of unauthorised or malicious software. In the context of Kubernetes, this includes monitoring cluster access, locking down RBAC and network policies, and leveraging deployment policies to prevent untrusted containers from running.
CC 7.1: This component emphasises detection and monitoring procedures to identify changes to configurations that introduce new vulnerabilities and susceptibilities to newly discovered vulnerabilities.
CC 7.2: Focused on continuous monitoring of the system, CC 7.2 aims to identify any anomalous activity or behavior that may affect an entity's ability to meet its objectives.
In summary, SOC 2 compliance is of paramount importance for organisations dealing with customer data, and the emergence of cloud-native technologies adds a layer of complexity to achieving it. By understanding and implementing key components like logical access security, infrastructure standardisation, vulnerability scanning, and continuous monitoring, organisations can successfully navigate this challenging landscape and ensure customer data remains secure.
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