Real Security Assurance Takes Real Commitment
Being able to demonstrate security compliance can open doors for SaaS companies. After successfully completing the SOC 2 or ISO 27001 audit processes, the clients your company attracts and their level of trust in you will increase. Sometimes dramatically!
But it’s also time and labor-intensive. For startups, you don’t have the resources to go through an audit much less put proper InfoSec practices in place. So what do you do when you want to build confidence and prove you’re a vendor companies can trust? Resource-strapped companies will inevitably find themselves in one of three scenarios:
- You need a SOC 2 report asap to win a deal. The focus is on just “getting it done” and getting the report rather than setting up proper security controls to ensure data protection.
- You’re in the middle of your SOC 2 audit but are running out of time. Depending on whether you’re getting your SOC 2 Type 1 or Type 2, you may have an observation period that could take three months, at best. And with a pending deal, you may not be able to afford potentially losing this deal.
- You want a way to prove you’re putting security first but you’re not ready for SOC 2. For early startups, in particular, getting funding or winning their first deal is contingent upon winning trust. And the best way to win trust is to prove your business is putting security at the forefront. But if no one is asking for a SOC 2 report, how do you show credibility?
These are all common pitfalls companies face when balancing business growth (sales) with industry best practices (data security). Another way to view this is compliance vs security.
As a startup ourselves, we recognize this challenge. So rather than force companies to choose between compliance and security, we’ve developed a security framework that is simple, easy to implement and follows industry best practices. And the best part? It offers security assurance in a way that gives the report more weight than a standard industry audit.
Introducing the Tugboat Logic Attestation Report and Certification
We’re passionate about security. We believe it should be attainable by any business regardless of size. The Tugboat Logic Attestation Report is an alternative way to prove you’re secure to customers and prospects. Since a third-party audit typically takes four to 12 months to complete, this module helps you create a “self-attestation” report in much less time to keep the sales process moving forward. The certification is modeled after best practices from the Center for Internet Security and the Cloud Security Alliance.
The Tugboat Logic Attestation Report badge you receive upon completion of certification.
How it works in three steps:
- Just focus on the important things. You’re given 20 controls to implement associated with an attestable framework—Tugboat Logic Essentials. Next, verify that all controls have been implemented, and have evidence collected. Don’t worry—all the controls guide you on what to do and why!
- Get your attestation report in real-time. Once you’ve finished your 20 controls, fill out a few pieces of information about your company and product. This will automatically generate a Tugboat Logic Attestation Report you can share with your sales prospects and customers that shows what security controls you have operational and explains those controls in an easy-to-read FAQ, similar to a security questionnaire format.
- Promote your security assurance! In addition to your report, you will also be given a badge that can be added to your website to let your customers know that you are Tugboat Logic Certified!
The Future of Security Assurance is Accountability
Not only does the Tugboat Logic Attestation Report provide an alternate way to prove you are secure, but it also comes pre-populated with answers—generated from the information you provided—to the most frequently asked questions. This means that when you give this report to prospects, you’re giving them proof of your commitment to their data protection.
Additionally, the only way you can attain this report is by successfully completing all the controls and including evidence collected for each control. This makes you accountable for making sure these security controls are always operational. It also means that every report generated will show all 20 of these controls as operating successfully (since that’s the only way you can generate a report). So it’s a win-win!
See? Compliance and security can coexist and neither have to be sacrificed in order to build trust! One more thing—in addition to these controls being modeled after best practices from the Center for Internet Security and the Cloud Security Alliance, they also seamlessly map to SOC 2 and ISO 27001. So when you find yourself having to go through one of these grueling audits, you’ve already done some of the work. Do the work once and leverage it again and again!