SOC 2 and Cybersecurity Awareness Training: Building a Secure Workforce

Key Takeaways

• Reduces Human-Related Risks: Ongoing cybersecurity awareness training helps employees recognize and respond to phishing and other common threats, reducing the risk of breaches caused by human error.
• Supports SOC 2 Compliance: Training reinforces key SOC 2 Security Trust Services Criteria, including strong password practices, MFA usage, threat awareness, and timely incident reporting.
• Strengthens Incident Response: Educating employees on how and when to report suspicious activity enables faster response and containment of potential security incidents.
• Protects Customer Data & Enhances Compliance: A well-trained workforce serves as the first line of defense for sensitive customer data and supports broader compliance efforts (e.g., SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, CMMC), demonstrating a strong security posture to clients.

For many organizations, cybersecurity awareness training is not top of mind or part of their culture. Cybersecurity awareness training is extremely important for many reasons, including SOC 2 compliance. This article will cover cybersecurity awareness training and how it can strengthen an organization and assist in meeting many of the control requirements for a SOC 2.

Human-Related Security Risks

A major goal of cybersecurity awareness training is to reduce human-related security risks. Phishing is a large vulnerability for most organizations. A key focus of cybersecurity training is on how to recognize different types of phishing emails. It is important for employees to be knowledgeable on all the phishing types, given phishing is a popular way cyber criminals try to acquire access to organization data. Organizations are only as strong as their weakest link, so all it takes is for one employee to click a malicious link or provide personal information compromising the organization.

With annual cybersecurity training, organizations can point out common threats to employees and train them how to catch and report any suspicious activity. Once employees learn about the different types of phishing methods, they can exercise what they learned in their daily functions which help mitigate human-related security risk. Well-educated employees coupled with good IT mitigation strategies will allow an organization to have a relatively high degree of defense against cyberattacks.

SOC 2 Security Requirements

Cybersecurity awareness training helps meet various SOC 2 requirements within the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Trust Services Criteria for Security related to unauthorized access, threat awareness, and incident reporting. Employee training should be on topics such as strong passwords, no password reuse, multi-factor authentication (MFA), recognizing hacker threats, and methods for reporting security incident events. Passwords, MFA, and threat identification are all controls that provide a strong security posture in a SOC 2.

Equally important is for employees to be aware and know how to report incident events and the process that is followed to address the incident. Cybersecurity training should cover how and who an employee is to report any suspected or actual security incident. Once the incident is reported to IT, they will execute their incident response plan by investigating and mitigating the security incident. The faster the security incident is reported to IT, the higher the likelihood that damage to the organization can be contained.

Customer Data Protection

Cybersecurity awareness training provides additional value in educating employees on how to protect customer data. In most instances if an organization’s system is compromised, one of the first items a cybercriminal will look to gain access to is customer data. Employees are the first line of defense between customer data and cybercriminals. Organizations who enforce MFA, strong password policies, and implement least privilege access help mitigate the risks from cybercriminals from obtaining customer data. A good point of view to instill in employees is that employee cybersecurity is one of the key components to protecting customer data from cybercriminals.

Training for Compliance

Cybersecurity awareness training is a part of a number of regulatory compliance frameworks like HIPAA, PCI, CMMC, FISMA, and SOC 2. Organization compliance with these frameworks highlights to the customer that they are entrusting their business to an organization that takes cyber security seriously. Compliance with these frameworks will not be accomplished overnight but will likely bring in more business opportunities while giving the organization a fighting chance from closing due to a security incident.

Overall, cybersecurity training has nothing but positive impacts on an organization and helps them be one step closer to being regulatory compliant. If your entity is interested in learning more about this cybersecurity training, or if there are any other questions related to SOC or our other services, don’t hesitate to contact Dave Hammarberg, CPA, CFE, CISSP, GSEC, MCSE, CISA, CHQP, CCSFP, CCA. Be sure to also visit our firm’s SOC & Cybersecurity industry page and SOC & Technology Consulting services page for additional information.

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