Building Trust and Confidence
in Third-Party Relationships
Today, it is common for entities to outsource to
a service organization certain tasks or functions
related to their business, even those that are
core to their operations. When users of a service
organization’s services (user entities) outsource
these tasks and functions, many of the risks
of the service organization become risks of
the user entities. In light of several prominent
internal-control breakdowns (e.g., security and
privacy breaches, and frauds) and increasing
regulatory focus on internal control (e.g.,
Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Basel II, HITECH and
HIPAA), user-entity management is increasing
its due diligence for prospective service
organizations and governance oversight of
current service organizations. Technological,
regulatory and other changes have heightened
the need for information and assurance that
enable management to demonstrate it has
addressed stakeholder concerns related
to the security, availability and processing
integrity of the systems a service organization
uses to process user entities’ data, and the
confidentiality and privacy of the information
these systems process.
By engaging an independent CPA to examine
and report on a service organization’s controls,
service organizations can respond to meet the
needs of their user entities and obtain an
objective evaluation of the effectiveness of
controls that address operations and
compliance, as well as financial reporting at
those user entities. To provide the framework
for CPAs to examine controls and to help
management understand the related risks,
the AICPA has established three Service
Organization Control (SOC) reporting options
(SOC 1, SOC 2 and SOC 3 reports).