ISO 27001 certification and a SOC 2 report answer different questions for different audiences, and neither is "better" in general. ISO 27001 certifies that an Information Security Management System (ISMS) meets an international standard. A SOC 2 examination is a CPA firm's attestation on controls against the AICPA Trust Services Criteria (TSC). The Secure Control Framework (SCF) Secure, Compliant & Resilient Conformity Assessment Program (SCR CAP) provides the ability for third-party certification of conformity with specific laws, regulations frameworks using SCF controls.
ISO 27001 tends to fit organizations that sell internationally, work with customers who name ISO in contracts or tenders, or want a management system that drives continual improvement. It is a statement about how you govern information security, not only about individual controls. If you are weighing it, our ISO 27001 and ISO 27002 guidance explains the structure and the related SCF mappings.
SOC 2 is common for service organizations, especially SaaS and Managed Service Providers (MSPs), whose customers want an independent opinion on controls relevant to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality or privacy. Because the output is a report rather than a certificate, customers can read the detail of what was tested. See this overview of the SOC 2 Trust Services Criteria for its five categories.
The SCR Conformity Assessment Program (SCR CAP) certifies conformity against a specific authority, such as NIST CSF 2.0, the NY DFS 23 NYCRR Part 500 regulation, CMMC Level 1 or the HIPAA Security Rule, or against a Tailored control set built from an organization's own obligations. The program uses an examine, interview and test methodology, and the SCF states that one engagement can demonstrate conformity with multiple requirements "rather than three separate assessments." Details are on the SCR CAP program page.
It is possible, but is based on the Third-Party Assessment Organization (3PAO). If a 3PAO is currently able to issue an ISO 27001 certification and SOC 2 report, then that 3PAO has the ability to generate multiple certifications within a single assessment. In principle, an 3PAO that separately holds the required credentials could deliver all three outputs from one SCF-based assessment and evidence set: the SCR CAP certification, a SOC 2 report and an ISO 27001 certificate. The SOC 2 report would still be issued by a licensed CPA firm under AICPA attestation standards, and the ISO 27001 certificate would still be issued by a certification body accredited to certify ISO/IEC 27001 (per ISO/IEC 27006-1). SCR CAP itself does not issue SOC 2 reports or ISO 27001 certificates.
This is where the efficiency case comes in. The SCF maps one set of controls to more than 200 laws, regulations and frameworks, including ISO 27001 and the Trust Services Criteria. If you implement and evidence the SCF controls once, the same evidence set can be organized for several assessments instead of being rebuilt for each one. Even without a combined engagement, a single control set reduces duplicate work. Our worked example of mapping SOC 2 to ISO 27001 with the SCF shows how the overlap is identified using Set Theory Relationship Mapping.
No. SOC 2 is an attestation examination performed by a licensed CPA firm, and the result is a SOC 2 report containing the auditor's opinion. ISO 27001, by contrast, results in a certificate from an accredited certification body.
The SCR CAP provides a viable alternative to ISO 27001 and SOC 2, based on the control set utilizes. SCR CAP is a separate certification against specific laws, frameworks or a Tailored control set. Whether a customer accepts it in place of ISO 27001 or SOC 2 depends on that customer's requirements, so confirm before assuming either way.
Third-Party Assessment Organizations (3PAOs) accredited by The Cyber AB. The 3PAO page explains how to find one.
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