August 30, 2023

SOC 2 Policies and Procedures

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Aligning with the AICPA’s SOC 2 compliance framework shows your clients and potential clients that your organisation focuses on five key trust principles: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.

While there aren’t mandatory SOC 2 policies and procedures, the standard does have ‘focus points’ your organisation needs to address if you’re working towards compliance – and these focus points include specific policies and procedures.

In this article we look at the policies and procedures your organisation may need to implement, their relevant clauses within the certification framework and the purpose behind each document.

What Are SOC 2 Policies and Procedures?

In the context of information security, policies are a set of guidelines that determine how your organisation’s information assets and resources should be applied, managed, and safeguarded. These policies address a risk or several related risks and define your strategy and approach to mitigating that risk, which should be applied across your organisation.

Procedures are used to define how your SOC 2 policies are enforced. They outline the steps that need to be taken to protect your organisation’s information assets, address potential threats and vulnerabilities, and respond to incidents.

SOC 2 Policies

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SOC 2 Procedures

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Final thought

Not all of the SOC 2 policies and procedures outlined above will be focus points for your business, depending on the trust service principle you’re focusing on. Discover more about the standard in our SOC 2 Hub.

Looking to achieve SOC 2 certification for your business? The process is quick, easy and pain-free with Hicomply.

Risk Management

Compliance Reporting

Policy Management

Incident Management

Audits and Assessments

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Risk Management

Identify, assess, and mitigate security risks with an integrated risk register.Hicomply’s automated risk management software maps controls across ISO 27001, SOC 2, and NIST frameworks — helping teams track risk treatment plans, assign ownership, and monitor real-time compliance status.Build a resilient ISMS that reduces audit findings and demonstrates continuous improvement.

Compliance Reporting

Generate instant, audit-ready compliance reports across multiple frameworks — from ISO 27001 and SOC 2 to GDPR, DORA, and NHS DSPT.Automated evidence collection and built-in dashboards provide a single source of truth for your compliance posture, saving weeks of manual work during audits.

Policy Management

Centralise, version, and publish all your information security policies in one place.Hicomply automates approvals, reminders, and distribution, ensuring your ISMS documentation stays current and aligned with frameworks like ISO 42001 and NIST CSF.Say goodbye to outdated PDFs — manage policies dynamically and maintain full traceability.

Incident Management

Capture, investigate, and resolve security incidents with structured workflows and automated evidence trails.Hicomply integrates with ticketing tools like Jira, Zendesk, and Azure DevOps to streamline incident response and link findings to risk and control updates — a key step for SOC 2 Type II readiness.

Audits and Assessments

Simplify internal and external audit preparation with built-in audit templates and automated task assignments.
Hicomply’s audit management platform aligns with ISO 27001, ISO 9001, and ISO 14001, giving teams a clear overview of control effectiveness, audit evidence, and corrective actions — all from one dashboard.