Satisfy Customer Requirements for Information Security

Add business value with SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification.

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Contributors

Fritz Jean-Louis, Director Information Security & Compliance, Info-Tech Research Group

Your Challenge

Your customers and potential customers are increasingly demanding assurance that you will meet their information security requirements.
Responding to these assurance demands requires ever more effort from the security team, which distracts them from their primary mission of protecting the organization.
Every customer seems to have their own custom security questionnaire they want you to complete, increasing the effort you have to expend to respond to them.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Your security program can be a differentiator and help win and retain customers.
Value rank your customers to right-size the level of effort your security team dedicates to responding to questionnaires.
SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification can be an important part of your security marketing, but only if you make the right business case.

Impact and Result

CISOs need to develop a marketing strategy for their information security program.
Ensure that your security team dedicates the appropriate amount of effort to sales by value ranking your potential customers and aligning efforts to value.
Develop a business case for SOC 2 or ISO 27001 to determine if certification makes sense for your organization, and to gain support from key stakeholders.

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should proactively satisfy customer requirements for information security, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the ways we can support you in completing this project.

Satisfy Customer Requirements for Information Security – Executive Brief

1. Manage customer expectations for information security

Identify your customers’ expectations for security and privacy, value rank your customers to right-size your efforts, and learn how to impress them with your information security program.

2. Select a certification path

Decide whether to obtain SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification, and build a business case for certification.

3. Obtain and maintain certification

Develop your certification scope, prepare for the audit, and learn how to maintain your certification over time.

Guided Implementations

This guided implementation is an eight call advisory process.

Guided Implementation #1 - Manage customer expectations for information security

Call #1 - Understand your customers and their security and privacy drivers.

Call #2 - Build a customer value ranking matrix.

Call #3 - Review options for satisfying customer expectations.

Guided Implementation #2 - Select a certification path

Call #1 - Review certification options and select a path.

Call #2 - Build a certification business case.

Guided Implementation #3 - Obtain and maintain certification

Call #1 - Define scope and controls.

Call #2 - Review auditor selection process.

Call #3 - Review steps to obtain and maintain certification.

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