Do You Actually Need SOC 2, CMMC, or HIPAA?
A customer just asked if you're "SOC 2 compliant" and you're not sure what that means? This free guide tells you which framework applies to your business in 5 minutes.
- Decision-by-trigger. Take payments? PCI. Touch health data? HIPAA. Sell to the DoD? CMMC. Sell SaaS to enterprises? SOC 2. Hold EU data? GDPR. Want a baseline? NIST CSF.
- A cheat-sheet matrix. One page that maps your business triggers to the framework that applies — print it, share it with your team.
- Plain-English requirements. What each framework actually asks of you, minus the auditor-speak.
- Common myths, debunked. "SOC 2 is a certification," "HIPAA only applies to hospitals," and other expensive misunderstandings.
- What to do next. Once you know your framework, the realistic first steps toward being audit-ready.
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Stop guessing which alphabet-soup acronym applies to you.
The hardest part of cybersecurity compliance isn't doing the work — it's figuring out which framework you're actually on the hook for. Pick the wrong one and you'll burn months on controls that don't apply to your business. Pick none and you'll find out the hard way, at insurance renewal or when an enterprise customer's procurement team sends a 200-question security questionnaire. This guide cuts through it: a few plain questions about your business, and you'll know exactly where you stand.
Start with your triggers, not the frameworks
Frameworks don't pick you at random — specific business activities pull them in. Take credit-card payments and PCI DSS applies, even if Stripe handles the card data. Create, store, or transmit health information and the HIPAA Security Rule applies, directly or as a business associate. Sell to or subcontract for the Department of Defense and CMMC (built on NIST 800-171) becomes a contract requirement. The guide is organized around these triggers so you can find yours fast.
The frameworks you're most likely to hit
SOC 2 is the de-facto entry ticket for selling software and services to enterprise buyers — no report, no procurement. GDPR (and its US state cousins) follows your customers' personal data, not your office location. And NIST CSF 2.0 is the sensible voluntary baseline when nothing specific is mandated but you still want a defensible program. We explain when each one is the right answer.
What each one really requires
Past the name, what does it actually take? The guide gives a plain-English summary of each framework's core demands — the kinds of controls, the evidence, and whether you need an outside auditor or just a defensible internal program. You'll leave with a realistic sense of effort, not a vague feeling of dread.
Myths that cost real money
"SOC 2 is a certification" (it isn't — it's an attestation report). "HIPAA only applies to hospitals" (it covers any business associate that touches PHI). "We're too small to be regulated" (PCI, GDPR, and state breach laws don't care about your headcount). We name the most common and most expensive misunderstandings so you don't act on them.
Pairs with Focus, our free advisor
This guide gets you oriented. When you're ready to go deeper, Focus — Red Hound's free AI-powered framework advisor at focus.redhound.us — asks a handful of questions about your business and recommends the right framework with citations to the actual rule, then walks you through a control-by-control assessment in plain language.
Then: a realistic first step
Knowing your framework is half the battle. The guide closes with what to do next — how to run a quick gap check, what evidence to start collecting, and when it makes sense to bring in help versus handling it in-house. No scare tactics, just a sane path forward.
Need a human to sanity-check your read? Red Hound offers pay-as-you-go compliance and audit-readiness consulting for SMBs. Book a 30-minute call and bring your questions.
Find out which framework applies — in five minutes.
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