What Are Security Controls (and How to Start Adopting Them)

If you have started looking into SOC 2 or a security review, you have run into the word control everywhere, usually without a definition. It sounds like jargon for something complicated. It is not. A control is simply a named thing you do to keep data safe, written down so you can prove you actually do it.

This is the middle step of building a compliance program. If you want the full path from your first security review to an audit, start with How to Start a Security Compliance Program. This piece zooms in on controls: what they are, the main kinds, and how to start adopting them without turning it into a research project.

What a Control Actually Is

A control is a commitment plus the proof that you keep it. Three parts:

• The commitment. A specific practice, stated plainly. "We review who has access to production every quarter." "We encrypt customer data at rest." "We run a background check before a new hire starts."
• An owner. One person accountable for the control being true, not a committee.
• Evidence. Something that shows the practice really happened: an access review export, a signed policy, a completed checklist. Good evidence has a freshness date, because "we did this once in 2024" is not the same as "we did this last quarter."

Put a few dozen of these together and you have a security program. An auditor's job is to check that your controls are real and your evidence is current. A framework like SOC 2 is just a specific list of controls a standard expects to see.

The Main Types of Controls

You do not need to memorize a taxonomy, but it helps to know the shape of a complete program. Controls tend to fall into a handful of areas:

• Access and identity: who can reach what, and how you review it.
• Data protection: encryption, retention, and how data is handled and disposed of.
• Governance and people: policies, security training, and background checks.
• Change and vulnerability management: how code ships and how you find and fix weaknesses.
• Resilience and incidents: backups, continuity, and how you respond when something goes wrong.
• Vendors and privacy: the third parties that touch your data, and your obligations under regulations like GDPR and CCPA/CPRA.

A framework spreads its requirements across these areas. When your controls cover them, the framework is largely covered too.

How to Start Adopting Them

The instinct is to open a blank document and start writing policies. Do not. Two reasons: you will miss things a standard expects, and you will spend weeks on wording before you have proven a single practice.

Start from a curated library instead. Adopt the controls that match how you already operate, and skip or note the ones that do not apply. For each control you adopt:

1. Assign an owner who can actually keep it true.
2. Attach evidence that the practice is happening, and set how fresh that evidence needs to stay.
3. Record an exception where a control genuinely does not apply, with a short reason, so the gap is documented rather than hidden.

Today, adopting a control and attaching its evidence is a hands-on step: an owner uploads or attests to the proof. That is a feature, not a limitation. The person accountable for a practice is the person who should confirm it is real, and it means your program reflects what you actually do rather than what a scan guessed.

In Concord, this is the Controls area of Concord Trust: adopt from the library, assign owners, attach evidence, and watch each control's status. When you are ready to prove it against a standard, adopt a framework and your controls map straight onto its requirements.

Where Controls Fit

Controls are the part of a compliance program you can start today, before you commit to a framework or book an audit. They turn "we take security seriously" into something specific and provable, and they are the evidence behind every good answer you give in a security review. Get the practices written down and owned, and the framework and the audit become a mapping exercise rather than a scramble.