“Benefits of SOC 2 for B2B sales,” If you’re looking to find out more about SOC compliance and learn more about its great benefits, you can read the following sections. SOC 2 is based on 5 essential principles, which guide your B2B organization to a high level of cybersecurity. We’ll be looking at the fruitful benefits of SOC 2 for B2B companies and explain how it helps your company and business stakeholders grow and develop.
Here are a bunch of questions we’re going to answer in this article. So, feel free for the next 5 minutes to get the point:
- What are the benefits of SOC 2 for B2B sales?
- How is structured?
- How can B2B SOC 2 companies benefit from SOC 2 compliance?
- Do B2B startups need SOC 2 reports?
- How SOC 2 helps B2B companies thrive in hard times?
- Is SOC 2 reports mandatory for business-to-business companies?
An Overview of SOC 2 Compliance for B2B
SOC 2 is one of the cybersecurity audits that is used to help service organizations provide assurance to partner companies and clients. It’s structured and developed by the American Institute of CPAs as an auditing process that aims to check if there is trustworthy data security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy in a B2B company or not.
The reports provided by SOC 2 B2B compliance are commonly used and requested to assess and confirm a B2B company has successfully implemented the necessary controls.
- Security: Benefits your business by preventing unauthorized use of vendor’s assets and data.
- Availability: Benefits your business by maintaining and monitoring your IT infrastructure.
- Processing integrity: Benefits your business by focusing on supplying the correct data at the right time.
- Confidentiality: Benefits your business by restricting and controlling access and preventing data disclosure.
- Privacy: Benefits your business by providing a high level of user data privacy.
The benefits of SOC 2 for B2B companies are provided by these 5 principles, and they work together as a seamless framework. Note that your IT security team can develop a customized plan for security controls based on these 5 principles.
Benefits of SOC 2 for B2B Companies: Building Trust and Reputation
Referring to the latest news about data breaches, there has been a notable number of breaches in the B2B industry, resulting in significant reputational damage to those companies working as B2B.
Building trust and reputation are the 2 main factors in the first stages of your business development which will expand your opportunities to attract more clients.
● Benefits of Building Trust and Reputation for Your B2B Company
All service organizations and B2B companies depend on clients’ trust. If your company is impacted by a breach or is at risk of one occurring in the future, your clients and business partners could simply ignore working with you.
Thus SOC 2 for B2B provides immense value in this industry, and it can save your brand from disastrous reputational damage caused by cyber threats.
● How SOC 2 for B2B Companies Can Help Improve Trust and Credibility
SOC 2 audit reports are performed according to 5 elemental principles, which are considered a cybersecurity framework. A B2B company will be able to protect its data and secure its IT infrastructure after deploying this framework to tell prospective business partners and clients their B2B company respects data security and privacy.
- SOC 2 keeps your company’s reputation intact by improving data security and preventing data breaches.
Benefits of SOC 2 for B2B Companies: Meeting Customer Demands
Meeting customer demand drives the success of B2B companies, regardless of size. Businesses have an important role in providing the required products and services to their clients with a high level of trust and security. Meeting customer expectations and demands will help you retain current customers and produce more customers over time.
● Benefits of Meeting Customer Demands for Your B2B Company
Meeting customer demands is crucial, especially for B2B companies that have a lot of competitors in place. It is one of the reasons why companies spend more on understanding what their customers want and which services hold them alongside their brands.
- Data security is a priority for your B2B partners and clients, so without a SOC 2 report, they couldn’t trust your business in case of data security.
● How SOC 2 for B2B Companies Helps Better Meet Customer Demands
SOC 2 puts data security and service availability first, which are 2 primary customer demands in the B2B industry. If you’re providing online software services or B2B products, your systems should run seamlessly, and a short downtime caused by cyber attacks can damage your brand significantly.
- Data security is an integrated requirement in the SOC 2 framework as it looks at data privacy as a priority.
Benefits of SOC 2 for B2B Companies: Creating a Competitive Advantage
Are you dealing with a lot of competitors in your industry? So, you need to create a competitive advantage for your company to always be ahead of the competition. Competitive advantage refers to factors and assets which differentiate your business from other competitors and showcase your company as a distinguished service provider in your industry.
- Having a competitive advantage such as a SOC 2 certification can benefit your business partners and your company.
● Benefits of Creating a Competitive Advantage in the B2B Industry
When you are a distinguished B2B service provider or product manufacturer, it means you can produce and deliver services and products better than your competitors. It allows your company to achieve the desired level of margins and generate value for the company and all stakeholders.
To gain and maintain a competitive advantage in the B2B industry, a company needs to spend time and budget and be certified by third-party organizations, such as AICPA. By nature, cybersecurity frameworks like SOC help B2B companies create a competitive advantage compared to other competitors who cannot show compliance.
● How SOC 2 for B2B Companies Provides a Competitive Advantage
Can cybersecurity be a source of competitive advantage? The majority of strategy consultants and researchers concluded that IT security is and will be an essential asset to all organizations that want to thrive and grow in the industry.
SOC 2 is developed by a team of strategy experts and data security professionals, and it is one of the main frameworks helping you produce a competitive advantage and attract more customers. Companies that lack the desired level of cybersecurity, typically suffer from long-lasting impacts on their financial performance, customer trust, and reputation. As a result, they can’t guarantee their success in an environment where they have many competitors.
SOC 2 is an ideal framework for simultaneously taking care of all these aspects and integrating all the required practices and security controls in your B2B company.
Benefits of SOC 2 for B2B Companies: Lowering Costs
Cost reduction involves the process of identifying and eliminating those factors that are important in producing additional and unnecessary costs. The goal of lowering costs is to cut down on the expenses that are spent on different sectors of a company, including information technology.
Cost reduction is crucial to a B2B company’s long-term profitability and sustainability. So by reducing additional expenses, you will be able to increase profit and revenue.
● Benefits of Lowering Costs for B2B Companies
Why is reducing costs good for your business? The answer is simple. Reducing costs increases your business efficiency, which can be translated to increased value for your company and shareholders.
As a result of this, you will be able to spend more time and money on critical tasks and help the financial growth and development of your company in the long run.
● How SOC 2 for B2B Companies Can Help Lower Costs
What if you could protect your organization against data breaches while also increasing your revenue and profit margin? Without any doubt, we believe having a high level of cybersecurity and protecting your hardware and software assets can enable you to achieve this.
Implementing SOC 2 rules in your organization means you are going to grow your revenue by saving a large number of costs incurred by costly breaches and system downs. According to IBM says the average total cost of a data breach was $4.35 million in 2022, and 45% of breaches have occurred in the cloud.
Based on statistics, your B2B company is more likely to be impacted by cyber threats than anytime before, and B2B companies need to take urgent steps to protect their systems and digital assets by employing the most trustworthy cybersecurity frameworks.
Additional Benefits of SOC 2 for B2B Companies
Most clients and business partners in the B2B industry demand SOC 2 compliance reports which demonstrates strict adherence to IT security. Achieving SOC 2 reports showcases your company has implemented the required list of data security controls and you’ve provided your clients with a secure environment.
Here we’ve listed some more benefits of SOC 2 for B2B companies to give you a better insight into how acquiring a SOC 2 report will help you build a better business:
SOC security controls help you:
- Provide better and on-time services
- Carry out resultful marketing
- Obtain ISO 27001 in a simpler way
- Increase operational effectiveness
- Showcase you are committed to IT security
- Get valuable insight into your IT security posture
- Proceed with peace of mind
- Increase your market share
Examples of How B2B Companies Can Benefit from SOC 2 Compliance
SOC 2 compliance also provides industry-specific benefits to different B2B companies. Here is a list of service providers and product manufacturers that have significantly benefited from employing the controls offered by SOC:
1. Managed Services
Managed service providers can build a distinguished company by demonstrating their adherence to SOC security controls. A managed service is a third-party company that remotely manages a client’s IT infrastructure or provides a specific range of products to customers. These services can include network and infrastructure management, security, and monitoring.
As a result, data security and protection become crucial for these businesses, which may store and process clients’ data and information. Customers want trust and reliability when working with your B2B company, and this involves secure handling of applications, databases, networks, and systems.
2. Banking and Financial Services
Banking and financial services are considered an important part of the B2B industry, and data security is so important when speaking about these types of businesses. Organizations like credit unions, banks, and credit card companies are more likely nowadays to be impacted by disastrous cyber threats, so there is an essential need to safeguard the data and information that is flowing into the systems of such organizations.
In addition, insurance companies, consumer finance companies, and stock brokerages are targets of cyber attacks nowadays, which makes it necessary to take urgent steps to secure both hardware and software assets in these organizations. Note that B2B companies that are working in the banking and financial services industry must also maintain the confidentiality and privacy of clients’ data comprehensively to demonstrate their procedures and processes are safe and protected against cyber threats.
3. Software as a Service
Software as a Service is a great approach in today’s digital world, and many companies are turning to using these services to improve their efficiency and productivity over time. Software as a Service providers can fundamentally benefit from the SOC 2 framework as it provides the desired cyber security and protection through 5 reliable principles.
Remember that your prospective customers can rest assured if you provide them with SOC 2 reports that explain all the controls implemented in your SaaS company. SaaS may shrink operation costs, lead to faster tasks, and reduce unnecessary expenses. For these reasons, a lot of companies would like to make use of these services. However, as a SaaS provider, you need to build trust to attract more clients and increase your market share. SOC 2 for SaaS Businesses provides you with this opportunity to improve your business and be ahead of the competition.
4. Data Centers
Data centers and hosting organizations serve many customers as B2B companies, so they can implement SOC controls to level up their cybersecurity posture and offer their customers better and more trustworthy services. Data security for data centers is critical since a minor error or damage in hardware or software systems can lead to irrecoverable damage.
There is a vast amount of sensitive data stored and maintained in data centers, which would make a breach aggressively damaging. Therefore, data center owners and managers scrutinize the internal controls offered by cybersecurity frameworks to implement them in the best way and provide the right level of assurance they desire.
Reforming Your Cybersecurity Posture to Benefit from Trustworthy Security Practices
A challenge for organizations that provide B2B services or products is how to position themselves on top in the industry. All businesses want to gain satisfactory market share, but it’s untouchable in many cases. There is typically one reason for this. When it comes to the B2B industry, clients and stakeholders are vigilant about how you’ll handle and protect their data after signing a contract.
A SOC 2 report for B2B ensures you are trusted by a recognized cybersecurity organization, so you can focus on profitability and growth after obtaining your report.
- Are you interested in hearing more about how the SOC 2 process works and how you can integrate the required security controls into your IT infrastructure? Schedule a meeting with Nordic Defender’s experts to learn more. We will respond to your messages ASAP.
How Nordic Defender Helps Your SaaS Business
Aside from risk assessment, reporting, and security analysis brought by the SOC framework, it offers your business one more benefit. Customization of controls is one of the notable benefits of SOC 2 for B2B since you will be able to make use of only the necessary practices and security controls.
Like many cybersecurity frameworks, the Service Organization Control framework focuses on the benefit of both companies and their clients by protecting sensitive data, increasing operational efficiency, and mitigating cyber threats.
Nordic Defender offers a cutting-edge method for employing well-known cybersecurity practices in small and large organizations. You only need to contact our team and provide us with some information about your goals and data security requirements.
So, it’s our approach to turn your ideas into action and improve your organization’s security posture to the desired level. Nordic Defender always emphasizes the following factors when working on your project:
● Detailed hardware and asset analysis
● Continuous controls monitoring
● Integration with your current technology stack
● Insightful reporting
● Committed to quality and performance
Feel free to contact us if you want to implement the most trustworthy data security controls and practices in your company.