P4.3 Securely disposing of personal information

Personal information is disposed of securely in line with privacy objectives. Points of focus: deletion requests are captured and the related information flagged for destruction; information no longer retained is anonymised, disposed of or destroyed in a way that prevents loss, theft, misuse or unauthorised access; and policies and procedures destroy information identified for destruction.

Source: SOC 2 (2017 Trust Services Criteria), P4.3. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open SOC 2 (2017 Trust Services Criteria) in the compliance library.

These are criteria, not controls: you design controls that meet them, and which criteria are in scope follows the categories your report covers (Security always; Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity and Privacy only if chosen). A Type 2 report tests that the controls operated across the period, so the evidence asked for is samples across that period, not one copy.