Why Both?
Health tech SaaS companies often face a two-front compliance requirement: HIPAA (because they handle PHI) and SOC 2 (because their enterprise customers require it before signing contracts). Running these programs independently is expensive and redundant — roughly 60% of controls overlap.
Control Overlap Map
Control Area HIPAA Reference SOC 2 TSC Shared Evidence
Access Controls HIPAA §164.312(a) SOC 2 CC6.1–CC6.3 MFA, unique user IDs, access provisioning/deprovisioning
| Audit Logging | HIPAA §164.312(b) SOC 2 CC7.2 | Audit trails, log retention, log integrity |
|---|---|---|
| Encryption in Transit HIPAA §164.312(e) SOC 2 CC6.7 | TLS 1.2+ for all ePHI/customer data transmissions | |
| Encryption at Rest | HIPAA §164.312(a)(2)(iv) | |
| SOC 2 CC6.1 | AES-256 encryption for data at rest | |
| Incident Response | HIPAA §164.308(a)(6) |
SOC 2 CC7.3–CC7.5 IR plan, detection, containment, recovery, notification
Vendor ManagementHIPAA BAA requirement
| SOC 2 CC9.2 | BA/vendor agreements, annual assessments |
|---|---|
| Risk Assessment | HIPAA §164.308(a)(1) |
| SOC 2 CC3.2 | Annual risk analysis / risk assessment |
Workforce Training HIPAA §164.308(a)(5) SOC 2 CC1.4 Security awareness training, role-based training
Backup & Recovery HIPAA §164.308(a)(7)
SOC 2 A1.2–A1.3 Backup procedures, recovery time objectives
Policy & Procedures HIPAA §164.316 SOC 2 CC5.3 Written information security policies and procedures
Gaps: HIPAA-Only and SOC 2-Only Requirements
HIPAA-only requirements (no SOC 2 overlap):
- Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) — required with every vendor handling PHI
- HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices — required for covered entities
- PHI-specific breach notification to HHS and affected individuals
- Minimum Necessary standard for PHI access and use
- HIPAA Privacy Officer designation
SOC 2-only requirements (no HIPAA overlap):
- Trust Service Criteria coverage (Availability, Confidentiality, Processing Integrity, Privacy TSCs)
- Formal auditor opinion from a licensed CPA firm
- System Description document (management assertion)
- CC8.1 Change management controls with formal approval workflows
- Availability commitments (SLA documentation, uptime monitoring)
Unified Control Set Approach
The most efficient approach: build a unified control set that satisfies both frameworks, collect evidence once, and map it to both. Iron Fort does this automatically — every control implementation is tagged to both HIPAA and SOC 2 TSC references where they overlap.
- Organizations running HIPAA and SOC 2 through Iron Fort reduce total compliance effort by ~40% compared to running separate programs — because overlapping evidence is collected once and credited to both.
Start Your Unified Compliance Program
Iron Fort's multi-framework module maps your controls across HIPAA and SOC 2 simultaneously. Book a free assessment at goironfort.com/demo.