> procuring the laptop might be a difficult thing for them to do bureaucratically
Not if they are at the point where they need SOC2 cert, and where they install agents on their employees computers (and want to extend that to their suppliers).
Not if they are at the point where they need SOC2 cert, and where they install agents on their employees computers (and want to extend that to their suppliers).
But there are a couple of our contractors that rejected this for exactly this reason (they had other clients). For one of them, we just bought him a laptop that he does all our work on (it cost less than 1 day of his time, so it was a no brainer), and the other, we realized we didn't have to as long as he did periodic (documented) reporting of screenshots of his OS version being up to date, Disk Encryption enabled, and screen saver settings are appropriate. And they legally attest that they make a best faith effort to delete any sensitive data off their laptops (if they ever download it).
We've talked to a couple of auditors and that seems to be sufficient and pragmatic as it accomplishes the same goal.
Every company I’ve ever worked at, and that includes very large ones, will have legal, HR, and finance tell you at some point that “you must do X”. Sometimes X is no big deal and you do it. Sometimes it’s hard, and you ask the business to fund it or remove the requirement. Sometimes it’s nonsensical in your context and at that point the job becomes understanding why X is a requirement and how you can satisfy that requirement in some more pragmatic way.
At the end of the day, these functions are there to support the business.
One day they sent out a particularly onerous "agreement" that said that we agreed not to use a phone while driving a car and doing so would be cause for termination etc.
I went down to HR and asked them if they were really trying to regulate what I was doing in my personal vehicle with my personal phone and they replied "No, its only meant for when you're in a company vehicle or using a company phone."
But the agreement itself clearly stated any phone any car.
The workaround I came up with was this-- a friend of mine and I swapped forms, and signed each others names. HR had their illegal, unenforceable agreement, and life moved on.
I got my "revenge" 6 months or so later. HR was frantically calling me for some reason-- I was stuck on the freeway as is our custom in Orange County. I ignored them for something like two hours, and explained that "I was stuck in traffic and as they were no doubt aware, we are prohibited by company policy from using our phones while operating a vehicle."
The HR gal was visibly pissed off, but to be fair, I could have been fired for answering that phone call.
I am not a lawyer, obviously, but what I meant was, threatening someone to sign a legal document can't be legal, even if its your employer.
If the company made the mistake of creating a policy that they use this software as one of their controls, then the auditor will ding them if they don’t use it.
It’s an absurd system.
A PCI question asks if all outbound traffic is explicitly authorized. I took that to mean getting a list of all the IPs for the APIs of services we hit, and even constructed that entire list except for one, the payment processor itself.
The payment processor did not have any stable IPs, and could not give me a list. Their official solution was to have our policy be that we explicitly allow _all_ outbound traffic.
If such an option is allowed by PCI, what is even the point of making it a requirement?
I made that joke to a VP once, and he brightened up and said "Yes! Exactly! Because until you're actually following explicit processes, you don't even know what you're doing wrong, in order to fix it!"
So I'm a lot less cynical about auditing certifications like this now.
The point of all those certifications (I took companies through the processes required for PCI, SOC2, and ISO27001 ) is security theater, a path in the back for the execs, the ability to have "I'm not to blame, I have this cert" in case of some shit happening, and the ability for sales to throw TLAs to prospects to show how Seriously(tm) the company takes security. Oh, and to check boxes to be able to transact with some large corporations.
There are plenty of stories of highly certified companies that were deeply penetrated and exposed, and all their security theater did not help.
The problem isn't these low bars, but rather the market for services to "help" people clear them, and the widespread perception that the bars are higher than they actually are.
My point is that if/when you get to need a SOC2 certification, you put the resources towards this, and you definitely have the financial/org means to procure hardware to suppliers if required.