Your employees are using AI tools. Are your SOC 2 commitments still intact?
AI tools processing client data, generating outputs used in business decisions, and accessing confidential information can undermine your SOC 2 controls. Aona discovers Shadow AI, enforces security policies, and provides the audit trail your auditor expects.
SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria apply to all systems processing in-scope data — including the AI tools your employees adopted last week.
The Security criteria require logical access controls over information and systems. This extends to AI tools that access, process, or store data in scope. Organisations must implement access controls for AI tools, monitor AI usage for unauthorised access, and ensure AI services meet the same security standards as other in-scope systems.
When business processes depend on AI tools, the Availability criteria require that these tools meet defined service commitments. Organisations must assess whether AI-dependent processes have appropriate redundancy, failover capabilities, and incident response procedures — particularly for AI tools embedded in customer-facing workflows.
Processing Integrity requires that system processing is complete, valid, accurate, timely, and authorised. AI tools that generate outputs used in business decisions, client deliverables, or financial reporting must be validated for accuracy. Organisations must implement controls to verify AI outputs and address the risk of AI hallucinations or inaccuracies.
The Confidentiality criteria require protection of information designated as confidential. When employees share client data, proprietary information, or trade secrets with AI tools, confidentiality commitments may be breached. Organisations must control what data enters AI tools and ensure AI vendors provide appropriate confidentiality protections.
The Privacy criteria address how personal information is collected, used, retained, disclosed, and disposed of. AI tools that process personal data must comply with the organisation's privacy commitments. This includes ensuring AI vendors meet privacy requirements, limiting personal data shared with AI tools, and maintaining records of AI processing activities involving personal data.
Shadow AI is the fastest-growing threat to SOC 2 compliance. AI tools adopted without governance create uncontrolled data flows that auditors will identify.
Employees using ChatGPT, Gemini, or other AI tools to process client data violate SOC 2 confidentiality and security commitments. These tools are outside your SOC 2 scope, lack appropriate access controls, and may retain data in ways that breach your service commitments.
Many AI vendors — including popular productivity AI tools — do not have SOC 2 Type II reports. Using these vendors for in-scope data without proper due diligence creates vendor risk that auditors will flag. Your SOC 2 obligations extend to your subservice organisations.
SOC 2 requires monitoring and logging of access to in-scope data. AI tools used outside IT governance typically lack the audit trail SOC 2 auditors expect. Without logs of what data was shared with AI and by whom, organisations cannot demonstrate control effectiveness.
Purpose-built AI security that addresses the SOC 2 compliance challenges of enterprise AI adoption.
Aona automatically identifies every AI tool in use across your organisation — including tools adopted by employees without IT approval. Determine which AI tools should be in your SOC 2 scope, assess their security posture, and close the visibility gap before your auditor finds it.
Define and enforce security policies for AI tool usage that align with SOC 2 Common Criteria. Control which AI tools are approved, what data classifications are permitted, who can access each tool, and how data is handled. Policies are enforced automatically and in real time.
Every AI interaction is logged with full context — who used which AI tool, what data was shared, and what policies were applied. Generate the monitoring and logging evidence SOC 2 auditors expect, mapped directly to Trust Services Criteria.
Assess AI vendor risk as part of your SOC 2 vendor management programme. Aona tracks which AI vendors have SOC 2 reports, evaluates their security posture, identifies gaps in vendor controls, and helps you manage complementary user entity controls (CUECs) for AI services.
Discover Shadow AI, enforce security controls, and generate the audit evidence your SOC 2 auditor expects — all from one platform.