Best Practices for Ongoing SOC Engagement Success
The demanding work of your SOC readiness assessment is behind you and now you are looking at the timeline for completion of the SOC examination by the service auditor. Sometimes this process can be overwhelming and quite nerve-wracking. At this point, the best thing you can do is breathe, and take steps to organize the process to ensure SOC examination success! A well-executed SOC report not only validates your internal controls but also strengthens trust with clients by demonstrating your commitment to data security and operational integrity. This article offers some best practices on how to manage an ongoing SOC examination successfully.
Understanding SOC Engagements
Monitor Progress
You have met with the service auditor to kick off the engagement and they hopefully talked through engagement milestones. To ensure that the engagement progresses according to those milestones, it is important to monitor progress.
Pay attention to the control walkthroughs scheduled compared to the number of controls to be covered in the SOC examination.
Evaluate the controls to be covered in walkthroughs and assess the time scheduled to ensure appropriate coverage of the controls.
Keep track of walkthroughs as they are completed to ensure all controls are adequately reviewed.
Review Deliverables
The service auditor has likely set up a portal, has made specific documentation requests, or will do so as the engagement progresses. Ensure that those requested documents are provided timely and are accurate according to the things discussed during the walkthroughs. This will help your internal team move through the controls and documentation requests from the service auditor more efficiently.
Track Issues
Things will come up, items will be missing, and the service auditor will ask questions about control evidence. Some of those items will turn into a “To Do” list. Those issues could range from simple to complex and may involve the need to engage with others within your organization. Make sure you are keeping track of those issues to ensure a complete and appropriate resolution.
Manage Resources
Smaller entities may have limited resources, while others may have many resources to complete tasks and provide evidence. As the internal organization leader of the SOC examination, it is important to ensure that all resources are managed in accordance with the engagement milestones. This will help the engagement stay on schedule, reduce scope creep, and ensure the final report is issued timely.
Regular and Active Communication With the Engagement Team
As the engagement moves along, a quality service auditor will ensure that there is communication back and forth between both teams. They will schedule regular updates and communicate additional documentation requests or issues and relay any exceptions or changes to the engagement timeline that may have crept in during the examination. the internal leader of the SOC examination, if you are actively engaged in the oversight of the examination, it is important to ensure that you are:
Tracking the engagement milestones and reducing barriers to communication with the engagement team.
Documenting and understanding any decisions being made by the engagement team, including exceptions or recommendations for changes to controls or processes.
Tracking action items necessary to ensure control evidence is appropriate and sufficient to corroborate control operating effectiveness.
Sharing progress with internal leadership and stakeholders. This helps the whole organization understand the end-to-end process of the SOC examination.
Addressing concerns that may arise during the SOC examination with either internal resources or external auditors. Doing this in a timely manner will help the engagement move along much more efficiently.
Maximizing Value from Your SOC Examination
After the service auditor team concludes the engagement and delivers the final report, it is always a best practice to have a follow-up meeting with the audit team to understand recommendations identified to improve your control environment. While service auditors may only have insight into the system or processes, they are auditing, they typically have a wealth of knowledge from other client engagements and experiences that could help strengthen your control environment.
To conclude, while conducting a SOC examination is not as extensive as a financial statement audit, it is important to ensure that you are monitoring the engagement and communicating regularly with the engagement team. These relatively small items go a long way in ensuring SOC examination success.
Expert Contributors
Kourtney Nett
Managing Director
