Apple Private Cloud Compute SoC 3 audit reports

For anyone unaware, a SOC3 is just a SOC2 with the audit details removed - it includes a high level statement from the company (Apple) and from the auditor (EY), that's it.

Also Apple certainly does invest heavily in security and privacy but SOC2's are so commoditized that it's like saying "look I can afford 50k", it's not particularly interesting

datakan2• 1 day ago

Everyone lies on SOC2. Auditors don't understand the technologies and just take peoples word for it. It's a shit practice

paulryanrogers5• 1 day ago

Citation needed. This is not my experience at all, after participating in such efforts at three different companies.

Terretta• 1 day ago

Importantly, anyone can get SOC2 (Type 1) by claiming some controls they figure they'll look at themselves.

SOC2 (Type 2) in theory requires an audit that you're actually doing what you said you'd do in (Type 1).

Both may also allow general lag time.

Note that firms decide on their own which controls to include, meaning, they get to decide to include or exclude various controls, the audit is on only the ones they picked. Pick basic controls, it's cheaper to pass easily, and now you have a logo.

This means SOC2s of either type cannot be compared to one another (and SOC2 Type 1 are roughly logo-ware).

SOC3 is, roughly, SOC2 redacted.

Recap:

SOC2 Type 1 is a firm picking some controls to say they'll do them, SOC2 Type 2 is roughly a firm having someone look at whether they're doing that (warning, screenshots might suffice, audit verification is probably not what you think), and SOC3 is public or non-confidential water down of that, typically without findings.

The only thing that matters is what controls, specifically, they're actually audited on. So ideally you want to know what the controls they picked are, and that a SOC2 Type 2 was audited on those.

Btw, keep in mind that "end to end encryption" means "https" and most controls have similarly basic ways of achieving them. It's difficult to fail SOC2 Type 2 core controls if you know "don't be useless" is how you pass them.

Also, it's not $50K even through the big five DIY SOC2 Type 2 shops. You can use the same ones trillion dollar firms use, by signing up online, and you'll be surprised how inexpensive relative to the cost of failing to let a business check that box in their procurement process.

FinnKuhn5• 1 day ago

I think companies like Deel showed that SOC2 is more show than anything else.

For context, this is how easy it is to get a SOC2: https://deepdelver.substack.com/p/delve-fake-compliance-as-a...

deepsun2• 1 day ago

Well you "claiming controls" to an independent CPA auditor. If a licensed CPA helps you lie -- they might lose their license (and can even get to prison), just like a tax preparer CPA can.

tptacek10• 24 hours ago

Literally any firm can get a SOC2 Type 1, because there's no lookback to it; the Type 1 is a pinky swear.

In practice, if you're careful about how you do your Type 1, the Type 2 is almost as trivial. Your HR/bizops practice is much more likely to screw up and cause exceptions than anything you do in IT or engineering.

michaelt• 23 hours ago

SOC2 (Type 2) in theory requires an audit that you're actually doing what you said you'd do in (Type 1).

Even with an external audit - think of how many projects and repositories and servers and libraries and legacy systems Apple, a 50-year-old company with 166,000 employees, could have.

Then think about how much inspection is involved in a $50,000 audit. I doubt you get more than one inspector working full time for a year. In which case they've got 45 seconds of to audit each employee's entire work output. And places like EY will bill some people out at $700/hour, so it could be an order of magnitude less than that.

So this isn't some fine-toothed-comb forensic investigation or adversarial penetration test.

deepsun2• 1 day ago

"look I can afford 50k"

Oh no. Looks like you never went through SOC2.

1. No, it does not require 50k, an auditor can cost way less (10k? maybe even less).

2. But the process of preparing for the audit will take a lot of work securing your systems (and increasing reliability and privacy as well), as long as you take it seriously. Of course you can lie to the auditor, but it's up on you. And auditor -- they might lose their CPA license and go to prison. Their job is to catch your lies.

Source -- went through it, and took it seriously. It really did increase our security stance, even though we thought we were good at it.

bayesnet• 1 day ago

That auditors are responsible for catching the lies of an audited company on penalty of being suspended is a position that the big audit firms would not agree with. They might agree that they are responsible for ensuring the material accuracy of accounts if fraud occurs, but even here EY has disclaimed responsibility if the fraud were sufficiently complex [0]. Indeed auditors lobbied very hard against being mandated with a broader anti-fraud role [1].

Admittedly this is on the "real" audit side and not the advisory/consulting side, which would be the ones to handle SOC I imagine, but nonetheless a position I find a bit absurd.

[0] https://www.ft.com/content/a9deb987-df70-4a72-bd41-47ed8942e...? [1]: https://www.ft.com/content/c25de9fb-a808-4946-ade6-80d76a66a...

tptacek10• 24 hours ago

I co-ran a business with a significant SOC2 practice (we ran security programs for startups), and then oversaw Fly.io's SOC2 Type 2. The person you're responding to is more right than you are, and I would push back in a variety of ways on your point (2).

akerl_• 21 hours ago

I'm scared of companies where SOC2 auditors are driving their security improvements. It's a bit like letting my toddler drive how I stock my pantry: surely by the end the pantry will be more full, but not really in the way I want.

shye• 1 day ago

Last I chatted with some friends who were going through their first SOC2, they quoted a much lower number.

sethhochberg• 1 day ago

The details people gloss over when throwing SOC 2 or whatever other audit costs around are the complexity of the system being audited, the chosen criteria to audit (AICPA defines 5 families of criteria... Security is one, but you can optionally add Processing Integrity, Confidentiality, etc etc) and the reputation of the auditor.

A security-only audit for a small company with a narrow product focus can indeed be very inexpensive. A full SOC 2 examination for a large organization with a mix of legacy and modern systems by a name-recognizable public accounting firm can be many hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more if you need a Big 4 firm.

In my opinion, there's not much value to the "cheap" audits... If you're doing enterprise sales to a certain kind of client, your partners who demand an audit are going to want a reputable auditor or they're just going to put you through their own in-depth procurement due diligence regardless. The segment of the industry where a SOC 2 attestation is mandatory to participate but where any random auditor will do feels pretty narrow.

tptacek10• 24 hours ago

You can get a SOC2 done for mid to mid-high thousands.

tptacek10• 23 hours ago

(Specifically: the SOC3 is a public report; the SOC2 report generally isn't supposed to be handed out except to named clients under contract. You pay extra to get the auditors to give you a report you can just stick on a website.)

dzonga• 23 hours ago

can someone correct me - so apple is using servers that are running a closed down version of iOS on what I would assume is apple silicone, probably excess chips or older chips for the iCloud Private Cloud ?

LoganDark2• 19 hours ago

Apple is definitely using custom silicon designed for PCC, as none of their existing chips have the memory capacity or bandwidth to serve LLMs to even a single client performantly, let alone many clients. The speed with which Apple Intelligence worked back when it actually used Apple's own PCC and not Google's cloud was still much higher than could be achieved with anything they sold to customers. Now of course, Siri AI is too big and expensive for even that, but hopefully Google's cloud is just a stopgap...

ProAm• 22 hours ago

Every audit is a cooked book audit. At least every single one Ive been a part of. Check mark tests.

pjmlp• 15 hours ago

Out of that whole report I got this gem,

macOS Security Compliance Project

https://pages.nist.gov/macos_security/

willswire• 12 hours ago

Wow very interesting. Makes me wonder if a DISA STIG for macOS is next…

wpm• 8 hours ago

This project can already generate baselines for DISA STIG for macOS

Apple Private Cloud Compute SoC 3 audit reports

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