Satisfy Customer Requirements for Information Security
Add business value with SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification.
View Storyboard
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.
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
