Sooner or later a customer or partner will ask whether you have ISO 27001 or SOC 2. They are the two most recognised ways to demonstrate you take information security seriously — but they come from different worlds and prove slightly different things. Here is how to tell them apart.

Key takeaways
  • ISO 27001 is an international standard you are certified against by an accredited body.
  • SOC 2 is an attestation report produced by an auditor, common in North America.
  • ISO 27001 certifies a management system; SOC 2 reports on controls against trust criteria.
  • Both expect backup, recovery and resilience to be in place and evidenced.

ISO 27001 in brief

ISO/IEC 27001 is an international standard for an Information Security Management System (ISMS). You build a risk-based management system, then an accredited certification body audits it and, if you pass, issues a certificate valid for a cycle with surveillance audits. It is recognised globally and is often the expected credential outside North America.

SOC 2 in brief

SOC 2 is not a certificate but an attestation report, produced by an independent auditor against the AICPA Trust Services Criteria (security, and optionally availability, processing integrity, confidentiality and privacy). A Type I report assesses control design at a point in time; a Type II assesses operating effectiveness over a period, usually 3–12 months. It is especially common among North American technology vendors.

The key differences

  • Form — ISO 27001 yields a pass/fail certificate; SOC 2 yields a detailed report you share under NDA.
  • Scope — ISO 27001 certifies a whole management system; SOC 2 reports on specific controls relevant to a service.
  • Geography — ISO 27001 is the global default; SOC 2 dominates in the US market.
  • Audience — a certificate is easy to publish; a SOC 2 report gives a reviewer granular detail.

Which do you need?

Let your market decide. If your customers and partners are international or government-adjacent, ISO 27001 is usually expected. If you sell to North American tech companies, you will hear SOC 2 more often. Many mature vendors eventually hold both, because the underlying controls overlap heavily.

What both assume about backups

Whichever path you take, resilience is in scope. Auditors will expect documented, tested backup and recovery, sensible retention, and protection of backups from tampering. If your business data includes cloud accounting, being able to show an independent, immutable backup with defined RPO and RTO is evidence you can point to directly.