SOC 2 Discontinuing Logical and Physical Protections (CC6.5)

Overview:
The entity discontinues logical and physical protections over physical assets only after the ability to read or recover data and software from those assets has been diminished and is no longer required to meet the entity’s objectives.

Action Items:
1) Create a records retention and protection policy and related procedures and publish on the company intranet for employees to access and review.
2) Create a media disposal policy and related procedures and publish on the company intranet for employees to access.
3) Inspect the record retention and protection policy to determine that media disposal procedures are in place to guide personnel in performing sanitization procedures on all instances where production data resides to ensure data and software is unrecoverable prior to retiring virtual assets.

Related Documents:
1) Records retention and protection policy
2) Media disposal policy

Additional Guidance:
The following points of focus highlight important characteristics related to this criterion:

1) Identifies Data and Software for Disposal—Procedures are in place to identify data and software stored on equipment to be disposed and to render such data and software unreadable.
2) Removes Data and Software From Entity Control—Procedures are in place to remove data and software stored on equipment to be removed from the physical control of the entity and to render such data and software unreadable.